The Magical World of Madame Métier

by Daphne Rose Kingma

  Morning light spilled in through the windows, radiant, golden. Madame Métier opened her eyes, surprised once again that Monsieur L’Ange was there beside her, his breath, his form, his beautiful eyes. She looked all around the room, which now felt different, inhabited, alive.

  “Look!” she said suddenly, and he looked up. There, as if etched in color on the wall hung a huge pale orange butterfly, its wings spread out so flat and still that it looked as if it had been painted, tromp l’oeil, on the wall.

  Then, even as she stared, its colorful, still configuration quivered, started to melt, to shift and change, until she could no longer see its elegant wings and speckled markings, but flames, orange flames, a great raging fire, and inexplicably again, she felt unbearably sad.

  “You have seen something again,” he said, holding her very near.

  “Yes,” she said “Fire. Flames. Fire.”

  Beside her, he was silent. Holding her. Taking one breath, then another. And another. She looked in his eyes, and she could see that he was weighing something.

  “You have just seen the fire,” he said.

  She was shaking a little, her cells strangely dancing. “Tell me,” she said. “What do you mean?”

  “There was a very bad fire in our house when I was seven,” said Monsieur L’Ange.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Madame Métier.

  “My mother died in it,” he said.

  Beside him, Madame Métier let out a little gasp.

  He paused, breathing again; then he went on. “She had a disease …” He whispered its name but all she could hear was “Huntington’s,” then he went on. “It dims the powers of the muscles and the brain. She was at home alone one day—I was at school—she lit the stove and it exploded. Because she was already so weak, she was unable to put out the fire. The house burned down and she …” He paused, beneath the covers holding her hand very tightly, as if to provide punctuation, a semi-colon or a period—“and she … burned up in it.”

  He paused again, and she could feel him deciding something, perhaps whether or not to go on. He took a few breaths. Then he said, “My father blamed me because I was so late coming home. I was the oldest, and I had stayed late after school, playing ball.”

  “And the others?”

  “The other. There was only one. My brother. He was younger and not yet in school. My mother, because of her illness, already could not take care of him. He was always cared for by a woman down the street.”

  “I see,” said Madame Métier. “And now? Where is he now?”

  Once again, beneath the sheets, Monsieur L’Ange squeezed her hand, breathing out, breathing in, with long empty pauses between. This time, clearly, he did not want to go on. Finally he said. “He also died.”

  “I see,” said Madame Métier, quietly. She imagined his brother also being trapped in the fire, but then she remembered that he was being cared for by the woman down the street.

  Beside her, Monsieur L’Ange waited again. Then opening both his eyes wide, very wide to the oncoming golden morning, he looked directly at her, as if to say that her eyes would be the blackboard, that in them he would read, as if written out in white chalk, exactly what she needed to know, the truth, or the truth necessarily obscured; and that then he would either continue or not go on. He looked in her eyes then, and he could see that she needed to know. To hear the whole truth. In words.

  “He also died of the disease,” he said. “It’s hereditary, It passes … from mothers to sons.”

  “To all sons?”

  There was a very long pause. Then, finally, he said, “Yes. To all sons.” He squeezed her hand again beneath the sheets, and for a long time, both of them were silent.

  “So then you … also?”

  There was another long pause. Then finally he said, “Yes. That’s why I walk so much at the beach. Exercise is very important. It delays … the onset.”

  Madame Métier lay beside him in shock. Once again, though differently, her body disappeared. She felt numb. Hair streaming around her, she laid her head on his heart. Then quietly, ever so quietly, ever so deeply, she started to sob. He put his index finger and his middle finger to her lips. “Shhhh,” he said. “It’s alright. We have every minute that we have. And every minute is a miracle.”

  As she lay upon him, she could feel his great strength far within, a wellspring of peace, as if having always known his own end, he lived each day in the deep acceptance of it. Adrift on his body, she wept now piteously, like a child. She felt for the moment not at all like a woman, but so young, so small, like a sparrow, a tiny bird in a world so immense that she could never traverse it. It was all, oh, so much, and she knew then the crown of tears that she had seen.

  She wanted to ask him when, under what conditions, and how long, but she could not. Instead, again, quietly on his body, she wept.

  “Don’t be sad,” he said finally, smoothing and smoothing her hair. “When the time comes, it will be easy. I’ll go to The Blue, where you just went, and I know it will be beautiful. You have to stay longer, because you have more work to do. You are my life’s work. My work is to be here, to love you. But your work … is only beginning.

  “And afterward … later, there will be other things. When you are old, and the pleasures of your beauty have faded, recognition, love, honor. But even for you, when your time comes, it will be easy, I promise. You will be wonderful. You will be ready. You will be surrounded by love.”

  She lay on him very still, until once again opened the river of tears. It flowed. And he held her close until every tear had passed from her.

  PART IV

  CHAPTER 1

  Monsieur Sorbonne and Madame Metier’s Portrait

  Monsieur Sorbonne was very excited the next day to go to the Films Development Store, where the clerk who ordinarily looked slightly like a monkey, today looked somewhat more like a baboon.

  “I’m sorry, Sir,” said the baboon, handing Monsieur Sorbonne a large gray envelope. “But once again there is a problem with your photographs. The prints, Sir, all have errors which, in spite of a number of printings, we have been unable to correct. Perhaps your light measurer was off, or you were shooting from an incorrect angle. In any case, there’s a problem. Once again, may I kindly suggest, Sir, that you have your camera checked.”

  So downhearted was Monsieur Sorbonne that, paying for the misfit pictures, he put the large gray envelope, without so much as a passing glance at the photographs, into his dog-eared briefcase. He hadn’t realized until just now how much he was invested in these particular photographs, how much, without admitting it, he had secretly hoped that photographing Madame Métier could somehow lead him to work that had meaning, deposit him eventually, or sooner, into a new profession.

  Whatever, he wondered, could be the problem? The first photographs—buildings, cornices, and balconies—had been ruined, no good. The second set—the maid, the guard, and the orphan children—had all been fine. As well as the ones of Madmoiselle Objet.The camera had been so-called “fixed,” but now, once again, problems. He could feel a small squall rising in him, that horrible, roller-coaster, out-of-sync feeling, which, as a man, he so despised. He hated emotions gone out of control. He felt awful—hopeless, helpless, deranged—the way Mademoiselle Objet must feel, it occurred to him now, when she got so upset that her feelings came out in her hands.

  It was amazing, awful really, how various things about one’s work could be so terribly upsetting. Except that this wasn’t his work. This was his art, his form of expression. That’s why he was so upset. Unlike his job, which he did merely for money, this was his life’s work, his calling—a source of meaning, a reason for living. And all true life’s works, he realized now, had certain things in common. The forms of them were varied, but no matter how simple or grand they were, each was the expression of a single human spirit; each was unique in what it had to offer; each somehow spoke to the human condition and served in some way to heal and transform. Madame Méti
er did that by being her radiant self. Mademoiselle Objet did that by serving, one step removed, but devotedly, in the mysterious chain of healing. And he—he had wanted to do it, too—by taking Madame Métier’s photograph, by capturing on film the spirit of this rare human being.

  But perhaps, it occurred to him now, as once again he contemplated the failure of his photographs, he had merely been self-serving. Perhaps he had just wanted to be delivered from his crypt—his little death trap of a cell in the basement of the Artifacts Museum. Or perhaps he had overlooked the meaning that already existed in his work. Artifacts, after all, were a tribute to the human spirit. Even Iron Age razor blades were statements of human ingenuity. Maybe the photographs had vanished in order to teach him a lesson.

  It was all so confusing. Maybe nothing had any more meaning than anything else. Or, maybe everything had meaning. Art did. Artifacts did. People did. Service did. Healing did. Even his search for meaning, he realized, had a meaning in itself. But in spite of his contemplations, he was mortally confused. Perhaps it was just that he had wanted so much to be the person to photograph Madame Métier, because like Mademoiselle Objet, he had felt a sort of beautiful internal tingling in her presence.

  He had been so around all the corners of the cosmos in his thinking that now nothingwas clear anymore except that he was, indeed, disappointed that the photographs had not turned out. And thinking a little sadly of the plain gray envelope, he returned, almost acceptingly, to his crypt at the Artifacts Museum.

  When he finally got home, Mademoiselle Objet could feel his deep disappointment, the sense of meaninglessness that had obviously invaded him, as, despairing, he set his briefcase down on the table. “The photographs didn’t turn out,” he said. “I can’t believe it. That camera’s jinxed.”

  “Not any of them?” asked a hopeful Mademoiselle Objet.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t looked, but the man at the Films Store told me they didn’t.”

  Hearing this, Mademoiselle Objet, too, was distressed. Like Madame Métier when she was distressed, Mademoiselle Objet suggested that they have some tea and then look at the photographs. And so it was that, in her most profoundly exquisite, object-arranging way, on two yellow-striped placemats, she set out two green-rimmed cups and two carved silver teaspoons. For she knew no other way, except by arranging objects, of how to comfort Monsieur Sorbonne.

  “I can’t even look at them,” he said. “The man at the Films Store said once again that something is wrong with the camera. I can’t believe it!”

  Having poured out the tea, Mademoiselle Objet retrieved from his briefcase the large gray envelope.

  “Now, close your eyes,” she said, teasing, and then she opened the envelope and riffled through its contents. Then, one by one, upside down, she laid out all the photographs on the clear center field of the table.

  “Now open your eyes,” she said, and at once they both opened their eyes. One by one, Mademoiselle Objet turned each of the photographs over until there on the table before them lay seven blank sheets of shining paper. They were all marked out by only the merest, faintest immaterial mist of an image of a woman, shadows of light upon light, in which floated two beautiful blue-gray eyes.

  They had not turned out, and yet, as she contemplated them, Mademoiselle Objet suddenly realized that they referred not to the person of Madame Métier, but to that mysterious something she always felt when she was in Madame Métier’s presence, a weird consuming peacefulness that always made it worthwhile, no matter how hopelessly disorganized she was, to work with Madame Métier. Far from not turning out, the photographs had more than turned out. For most remarkably, they had recorded not Madame Métier’s visage, but her essence.

  CHAPTER 2

  Madame Métier Fails to Come to Work

  The following morning, Madame Métier did not come to work. Her heart was with tears. Today nothing mattered and everything mattered. Monsieur L’Ange had left, and in time he would leave even more. Although she could feel the pull of Mademoiselle Objet in the workroom, the sounds of all her morning preparings, she knew she couldn’t possibly face her. Finally, at noon, she wrote a small note and slipped it under the workroom door.

  She was shattered, remembering his words. It was unbearable, really, the way that life, this miracle, could be so endlessly punctuated by loss, the way that, so trustingly, like a flower, you could open your heart and your spirit and even your body to someone and then be so deeply invaded by loss. Loss, was it?—Or love? Yes, it was love. But there was loss attached to it, like a tail of ribbons attached to a kite.

  Loss, loss, loss: the word repeated itself like a haunting, insouciant music that seemed now to have been the counterpoint to her entire life. Loss: the visitation of emptiness, of infinite absence. The death of her father when she was young, the death of her daughter, her husband, and now this one, this Monsieur L’Ange, whose true name it occurred to her now, she didn’t even know.

  She felt a sharp pain in her chest, as if her heart had been wound around by a thin steel wire that kept being pulled up tighter and tighter by some huge invisible hand. For a minute she wanted to scream, to howl at the gods. The other losses—they had all come out of nowhere, unexpected, each in its own time. But this one had been announced, foretold. She would have to live every day in the face of it, waiting, knowing, every minute. How could she bear such a loss, or ever stretch her soul large enough to contain it?

  CHAPTER 3

  Monsieur Sorbonne Discovers His True Vocation

  The following day, Monsieur Sorbonne was greeted in his cellar crypt by the artifacts Curator-in-Chief, who, like a monolith from Stonehenge, was standing just inside the door.

  “You’re late,” he said, definitively, when Monsieur Sorbonne walked in. “You left untimely, prematurely early yesterday. You have done nothing, I see, with the Pre-Columbian group, and frankly, your days are numbered.”

  Monsieur Sorbonne, undaunted, hung up his coat on the hat rack, while the curator, like a starving, zoo-caged lion was fretfully pacing. “You don’t seem to comprehend the seriousness of all this,” he went on. “Your position, Monsieur, is in jeopardy. I am threatening you,” he said now, quite nakedly, “with almost imminent unemployment.”

  “I understand,” said Monsieur Sorbonne. He was amazed at the quality of his composure, so still and strong, so clear and lucent did his own voice seem. He was slightly aware as he spoke, of being vaguely, innerly haunted by the photographs of Madame Métier. They hadn’t failed, it occurred to him now. They had, in fact, most exceptionally succeeded. It had been given to him, for no reason and for every reason, to capture not the material but the interior essence—the spirit—of a most extraordinary human being. And this—this was far beyond artifacts, this was far, far, far beyond the mere reconstruction of things. This was the meaning beyond, within, outside of, and inherent in all living things. He had breathed it, felt it yesterday as he sat and stood and moved in Madame Métier’s presence. And he had captured it, in his most remarkable photographs. He had a direct experience of meaning, and in having it had found his true vocation.

  Contemplating all this in the midst of the Museum Curator’s presence, Monsieur Sorbonne felt strongly at peace, impervious to the threatening huffings and puffings.

  Indeed, a circle of silence seemed to have fallen around them. As if he had felt the power of Monsieur Sorbonne’s discovery. The Curator-Chief himself seemed strangely suddenly still, excerpted from all motion, and his voice, when he spoke once again, seemed somehow to have had changed. “Perhaps,” he said, now quite sympathetically, “you have been going through some exigencies of your own.”

  “I have, as a matter of fact,” said Monsieur Sorbonne, “and I more than a little appreciate your noticing.”

  “Well, then, we shall be more than patient with you,” the Museum Curator said. “So have a good day.” And so saying, he rather quickly let himself out of the room.

  CHAPTER 4

  Monsieur Sorbonne Comfort
s Mademoiselle Objet

  That night, when Monsieur Sorbonne got home, he was utterly composed. Without thinking, without effort, frustration, or regret, he had set about his work and done it. Being himself thus at peace, he was disheartened to discover that Mademoiselle Objet, who had been home all afternoon, was mortally distressed.

  It was somewhat distressing also, to see how endlessly teeter-tottering life seemed to be. Moment by moment, nothing seemed to stay the same. He was down; she was up—and comforted him. And now vice versa—everything. And yet in the midst of it all he retained, extraordinarily, his composure. Something had happened to him. Something deep. He had found his vocation: capturing light, revealing the human—no, not just the human, but the divine-within-the-human—condition. And having finally discovered it, he had also encountered a strange new strength in himself from which he could now address the fuming Mademoiselle Objet.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, noting the minute he did, that his own composure started to crumble. Her moods, the endless variability of the human condition as it expressed itself in her, unlike pot shards or pre-Columbian fragments, did, he noted, still have the capacity to disturb him. Holding on as much as he could to the anchor of his composure, he sat down beside her, and, patting her lovely dark hair, prepared himself to listen.

  “It’s my work,” said Mademoiselle Objet. “It’s that wretched, outlandish, uncontrollable Madame Métier! She never even showed up today! I’d been working all morning, mailing out her damn cremes and charming the people at the TeleVisions station, and then finally at noon she slipped a note under the door, saying she wasn’t coming at all. It was an insult! As if I’m not working for her! As if she’s not even doing this work! All I know is something’s changed. She hasn’t been herself lately, and I don’t know what’s happening!! I finally had everything under control, and now this!!”