“You are so beautiful when you say such beautiful things,” said Monsieur L’Ange. Across from her, angelically, he smiled, as if he had taken in with his soul each syllable she had spoken. The smile ascended his face, inhabited and recomposed it, and then above him and around him—was it true, or had she imagined it?—there appeared the faintest circle of light.
In the bedroom, in the half-light of the half-risen moon, she was removing her emerald silk stockings while Monsieur L’Ange, already ensconced in the bed, a faint rectangle of light from the window framing his face, was quietly watching her. “What a beautiful evening we’ve had,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, slipping into the bed beside him. “It was wonderful, extraordinary, once in a lifetime.”
“So true,” said Monsieur L’Ange. “One doesn’t have often in life such perfect occasions, when everything—work, love, honor, a wonderful meal, celebration—all at once comes together.” His voice had become soft and dreamy, as if perhaps he had eaten too much and momentarily would drift off to sleep.
With her fingers shadowed by moonlight, she was tracing the lines of his face. His forehead, the caves of his eyes, his cheeks, his lips, and as she did—as if the movements of her hands all bathed in moonlight, were conferring light on him—there seemed to bloom all around him, distinctly, a circle of light.
“You are surrounded by light,” she said.
“I am becoming light,” he said. “I am moving toward the light.” His eyes fluttered closed. “Ah, yes,” he said, as if on a distant screen he were watching a movie. “So beautiful. We are all moving toward the light. But you and I—we are the fortunate ones, the privileged ones, to have had so much, to have had it all together at once, love in the body, love from the heart, a life’s work that is love, so many beautiful moments together, the sun …”
“Yes,” she said. “So many beautiful afternoons …” Then suddenly she felt strange, uncomfortable with all this recounting, as if the events of the day, despite their special beauty, were unworthy of all this attention.
“And I want you to remember all this, to think of it often and always be glad when I am …” but he didn’t finish the sentence. His voice had drifted into a whisper.
Madame Métier was startled. He must be already almost asleep, she was thinking. She raised herself up on her elbows, the more directly to see him, to look down more at his face. And when she did, he was smiling. His eyes, half-glazed and misty, were focused and not-focused both at once.
He continued to speak. “I’m going to go now. Soon. Tonight. Tonight, I’m going to step through my body. Tonight. I can feel it. It’s time.”
She looked at him disbelieving. A snake of pain ascended her spine. For a minute she wanted to scream, but when she looked down again at his face, it was a portrait of pure bliss, of absolute radiant calm. He reached across the pillows then, and drew her down into his arms, his huge beautiful hand beginning to open and fasten itself like an ivy stem along the curve of her shoulder.
“You have already seen this,” he said, “with the eye between your eyes. Remember the green stockings? The catafalque? The white sheet?”
Yes. It was true. The red dress. The green stockings. The catafalque. You and the others. Remembering all this, seeing again what she had seen on the night she had seen his so many deaths, she laid her head on his heart, and piteously, she wept.
“But how can you … ?” she said finally, lifting her head up to look at him.
“I don’t know. How—I don’t know. But I will—I do know that. It has been given to me to see that. As it was given to you to see what you saw. And … I can feel it. I can feel already the door beginning to open, the door through which I will step through my body.”
Believing yet disbelieving, knowing, yet hoping beyond hope, she lay on his chest, feeling each beat of his heart, each breath of his breathing. His utter peacefulness was strangely beautiful, was beautifully, strangely compelling. Could it be true that he was dying? Could a person be so alive, so filled with the essence of life—hands that touched, arms that embraced, eyes that beheld, lips that ever so tenderly, brushingly kissed you—and in the same breath or the next, cease to be?
“We are all always dying,” he said. “Life is the practice of death, and death is the great re-birth, the great new beginning.”
Vaguely, effortfully now, as if already for months he had been dying, he propped himself up on the pillows and, struggling, raised his head. A certain deep weakness and, she could see, had already come into his body.
“And so,” he said, “there are some things I want to tell you now … before I go. And I must speak quickly; there isn’t much time.”
There was a depth of tenderness, a great encircling wreath of compassion, of immemorial knowing now in his voice, as if he spoke to her now no longer as himself, from inside his own heart or mind, but from some ancient well of wisdom.
“There will be … something untoward, something unbelievable around your work, a test,” he said, “something so cruel you cannot imagine …” But here his voice drifted off, as if in watching a movie the film had suddenly snapped, leaving a jumble of sideways-printed white letters on the still, black screen … “the woman who works for you … and the man next to her—her husband? …” he strained, as if with his eyes to see in the distance more clearly the image of this man—“they will go through it with you. They love you more than you can imagine, and they will be with you always, even until the end.”
He struggled, then, to sit up, and his whole body for a moment, was framed in a pale rectangle of light. “And finally …” he said, looking off through the window and into the distance, “I also will always be with you. Whenever you see a rectangle of light …” and once again his voice drifted off, “… that will be me holding you. That will be you, sheltered in my embrace.”
He turned back then from the window, and looked directly at her. The huge blue irises of his eyes, she could see, had gone pale now. They were slightly blurred, soft-focused and ethereal, strangely infused, as if illumined from inside, with some far, mysterious light.
So steady and calm had he been in all this saying, so absolutely clear and strong, that for a moment she was dissuaded from her grief.
“Thank you,” he said, and then, rearranging himself so that once again he could see her, his great hand once again enclosing the curve of her shoulder, he went on. “I came here to love you. Loving you has been my life’s work. Loving you … is what gave my life meaning. Loving you … ”—and here she could see a thin stream of tears starting to wind its way down his cheeks—“holding you, making love to you, watching you be beautiful every which way,”—softly, faintly, a little, he laughed—“has been the greatest joy of all my lives.”
She had propped herself up on her elbows and now she was looking down at him. He took a single long breath. Then he heaved a great sigh, and then, as she watched, he opened his eyes—wide wide wide—as if to take in a whole other world; and then, as she continued to watch, unmoving and silent and still, all the light all at once went out of his eyes.
For some minutes she sat there, transfixed and silent beside him. Then her white tears fell and fell into his blue empty eyes. And when she had finished, she closed both his eyes and got up from the bed and pulled the white sheet up over him.
PART V
CHAPTER 1
Madame Métier, Monsieur Sorbonne, and Mademoiselle Objet Have a Little Ceremony
“I don’t know how to grieve, and I never quite did understand your relationship to him, but I can help you with all the objects, and I can arrange things.”
So saying, Mademoiselle Objet had arranged for Monsieur L’Ange’s body to be burned to ash, and his ashes gathered into the beautiful cedarwood box, which, with his exquisite taste, Monsieur Sorbonne had chosen.
It was almost winter, November, a stunning clear day, with luminous cumulo-nimbus above, when, with Monsieur Sorbonne to her left, wearing a gray morning coat with back lambsk
in lapels, and Mademoiselle Objet to her right, wearing her-seal-gray dress and the pale-blue heart locket (and crumpling nervously in her left hand a lace-edged handkerchief), Madame Métier, wearing a flowing simple black dress, and quietly weeping beneath a black tufted veil, scattered Monsieur L’Ange’s ashes among the bare twig branches of the pruned rose bushes in her garden, where, for a moment, catching the sun, they blew up like motes of light in the wind.
CHAPTER 2
Madame Métier Is Subdued
In the weeks that followed, Madame Métier was very subdued. Quietly, steadily, one day after another, she gave herself to her work, and tried to accept, in a way that she never had before, that her life was her work. Inside, she felt a deep peace and an infinite sorrow, for she could remember having been loved, and the love she had felt resided now within her like a blossom in her heart.
No more did she skip out of the workroom at odd hours and head for the beach in her red bathing suit. She had, in fact, thrown it out. “No time, anymore, for the beach,” she said, point-blank to Mademoiselle Objet during one of their frequent cleaning-up fits.
“I understand,” said Mademoiselle Objet, and she had lovingly folded it up and put it sadly into one of the brown paper throw-away bags, knowing it wasn’t because there wasn’t any time, but because of Monsieur L’Ange’s death, that Madame Métier no longer wanted to go to the beach.
It was sad, she thought, this patina of quiet stability which had affixed itself to Madme Métier. As irritating as her eccentricities had always been in the past, this plain predictability was somehow even more upsetting.
Although she continued each day with her cremes, as Mademoiselle Objet had suggested, she had also started making speeches, and in them and on her TeleVisions program, she had become more deep, more philosophical, talking not so much anymore about each of her cremes and its particular attributes, as about the deeper meaning of things—which habits of the mind or losses of the heart created the conditions that necessitated cremes, and which revolutions of the spirit, in addition to her cremes, might be required to change them.
At night, though, alone in her room, from time to time, she wept, especially when at certain times the moon would shine in through the window, imprinting a huge rectangle of light on the bed. It was then that, leaning over and grasping the distant pillow—the one that still smelled faintly of clary sage, was it? or saxifrage?—she wept most piteously of all.
CHAPTER 3
An Untoward Thing Occurs
Mademoiselle Objet was very startled indeed, upon arriving at work one morning, to see Madame Métier standing handcuffed in the front hall, two policeman, a fat one to her right and a wizened one with a menacing beard to her left, restraining her forcibly, like a criminal, by the shoulders.
“And who’s this?” snapped one of them, as Mademoiselle Objet, parcels in hand, stepped through the front door.
Madame Métier was about to explain, but Mademoiselle Objet interrupted. “What’s going on?” she demanded.
“As if you don’t know!” said one of the policemen, yanking Madame Métier by the arm like a dog on a leash. “You’re probably part of this whole operation.”
“I am. You’re right,” said Mademoiselle Objet, whereupon the policeman to Madame Métier’s left took a threatening step in her direction.
“She’s not,” said Madame Métier. “Leave her alone!”
“What’s going on!?” shrieked Mademoiselle Objet, unpacking a piece of her long-retired hysteria.
“This woman, as if you didn’t know,” said the fat policeman, scowling, “and I’m not sure you don’t!—is a white drugs trafficker and has been for years. Someone just died from the drugs she sold him. You think you work for a saint. These cremes, this botanical nonsense—it’s all a front. Apparently, you have no idea just who you’re working for.”
Mademiselle Objet was aghast. She felt crazed. Turned upside-down and sideways. Suddenly everything made no sense. Or could it be true? Had she been so caught up with herself, so self-involved and spoiled and controlling, that she’d never read the signs? Where had Madame Métier been all those afternoons? Had she really been at the beach? And what about Monsieur L’Ange? What had he died of after all? And why had he died so young? For a minute everything seemed to make some terrible diabolical sense. Madame Métier and her cremes? How had she made a living from her cremes? Maybe it had been a front. But even as she entertained all the unspeakable possibilities, she found herself, at the core, unable to believe them.
“You’re wrong,” she screamed at the policeman. “This is crazy. You’re insane!”
The two policemen in tandem turned and wheeled on her. “Don’t talk to the law like that,” said the one to Madame Métier’s left. “Or, with or without a warrant, we’ll bring you in, too!”
Shaken, Mademoiselle Objet ran up the stairs to call Monsieur Sorbonne, and the last thing she saw, as she vanished, quivering, into the workroom, was the fat policeman hauling Madame Métier by the handcuffs, out the front door.
CHAPTER 4
Madame Métier Is Detained
“There will be something untoward, something unbelievable, around your work—a test …”
Madame Métier was thinking of that when, in the Holdings Room of the Police Station where she was being detained, a rectangle of pale-yellow light fell in through the window and surrounded her. Behind her a janitor had let up the dark-green shade, allowing the midmorning sunlight to enter the room.
Standing in its midst, several tears crossed her eyes, and as the rectangle of sunlight continued to embrace her, she remembered Monsieur L’Ange’s words: “Whenever you see a rectangle of light … that will be me holding you …” and she quietly smiled.
“What’s so funny?” barked the officer. “You don’t seem to comprehend the seriousness of your situation. You drug scum are all alike.”
“I’m sorry,” said Madame Métier, “I was just thinking of something.”
“You should be! Someone has died—a very prominent person! And four other people are getting their stomachs pumped out right this minute.” The policeman rolled over some pages on a rusty masonite clipboard. “Is it, or is it not true,” he growled, looking down at a scribbled report, then back at her, “that four years ago you sold a huge packet of white powder to a Monsieur Morte—who himself is now dead—for $5,000?”
Incredulous, Madame Métier shook her head.
“Is that a denial? Or an admission?” he barked.
Madame Métier was both reeling and infinitely calm. She was reeling because it was all so preposterous, and calm because she was standing in the light. For, as she followed the officer across the room and sat speaking to him now inside the dark-green grillwork of his cubicle, the rectangle of light in which she had been standing in the Holdings Room continued to surround her.
“Answer me!” said the policeman, pounding his fist on the scuffed leather top of an old wooden desk. “Or don’t answer me! Don’t bother to tell me your lies. We already know all about you—the deal with Morte, and who knows who else. It’s just unbelievable, what you’ve been getting away with all these years. Or are you going to tell me that you really do make cremes!? Your fingerprints were all over the biggest packet in his stash. Only yours! And his! So just for the record, did you or did you not sell Morte a packet of white drugs powder—$60,000 worth—the biggest single stash this force has ever come across!? Did you?! Or did you not?!” He looked across at her, eyes glaring, teeth bared.
“I did,” said Madame Métier, her voice subdued. “It’s true.” What else could she say? It was true. How amazing. How strange. It was, in fact, true. She had sold the packet of white drugs powder from her husband’s Medicines Chest to the now extinct Monsieur Morte. “But … I was completely unaware … I had never even … there were extraordinary circumstances,” she said haltingly.
“How could you!?” asked the officer, once again slamming his fist on the desk.
“I don’t know,” said
Madame Métier, quietly. Vaguely, it was all coming back to her now. The white powder packet. The $5,000. Her husband, the doctor. It was incredible. Perhaps that was why—or how—he had scrambled himself all over the road.
She looked down at her hands, clamped in handcuffs, rigid, immobilized in front of her. This was impossible. Real. Impossible. Real. The truth waved in and out of her mind like a tattered flag in the breeze.
It seemed impossible, but clearly it was true. True and not true, both at once.
CHAPTER 5
Madame Métier Is Further Detained
Madame Métier passed the night in the jail cell disbelieving. In the morning when she awoke, disoriented and weary, she looked up, as through the high barred windows, morning sunlight fell in on her lap, shedding a small rectangle of light that framed her still, folded hands.
At dawn a guard had brought her some breakfast, sugared crackle flakes with imitation milk, which she left on the tray and refused to eat. Instead, she poured herself some water from the metal pitcher that stood on a small metal table beside her cot and sat down on the metal chair in the corner. She was going over things in her mind, wondering how she had come to all this.
She had married the doctor—that’s how. But how could she have been so blind all those years? It was amazing—the things that were true about people—about yourself—that you could be right in the midst of and yet still not see.
She was just thinking all this when Mademoiselle Objet appeared in the hallway outside her cell, newspapers in hand. She, too, looked weary, yet remarkably composed as she held up the paper for Madame Métier to see. “Inventor of Cremes and Noted TeleVisions Personality Arrested on White Drug Charges,” read the headline.
The Magical World of Madame Métier Page 20
