Madeleine Is Sleeping (6 page)

Oh yes! The flatulent man stoops to retrieve it.

What a pleasure it is, he says, to eat an orange in the afternoon.

Seating himself on a wrought iron chair, he presses his thumbnail into the rind. Madeleine continues to stare at him, hungry and implacable.

Forgive me, M. Pujol cries in embarrassment. We will both have oranges!

And moving through the trees, he cups oranges in his hands, brings them up to his nose. After sniffing, he decides; he grasps and pulls; the little tree bends forward and then snaps back, shivering.

Catch! he says, throwing the orange at the girl, the orange arcing like a sun, the girl catching it in the great dull mitts of her hands.

He resumes peeling.

She looks down at her hands, at the intractable orange.

His long fingers ease the rind from the flesh, sending up a mist, a sigh, a tearing sound. As M. Pujol peels, he releases into the air
the scent of oranges. He is absorbed in keeping the rind whole, a rough skin unfurling from his fingers.

He glances up at Madeleine. She is still standing there, mute, studying her orange.

Oh! His embarrassment is complete.

Would you allow me? he asks, starting from his chair, reaching out to the girl, spilling his orange from his lap, and watching it bounce across the floor. M. Pujol falters, unsure of whether to rescue Madeleine from her predicament, or the orange from the floor, which he then might offer to her in apology. But the orange will be dirtied and bruised; the girl will be made more unhappy; the orange has rolled its way to the feet of the girl. He must pick it up, must make amends, and so he stands and bends at the waist, attempting in his confusion to both bow to the girl and recover the orange, and as he does so, as he is bending over, she sees the soft hair growing along the back of his neck, just as it would on the neck of a boy, and she is surprised.

SHE WOULD LIKE
to touch the soft hair growing there on the back of his neck: it is the palest, finest pelt, like that of a very young child. She would like to stretch out a finger and stroke it, so tenderly that even he would not know that he had been touched. But she cannot brush against anything with just a fingertip. Were she to touch M. Pujol, he would feel a paw. He would feel a warm weight falling eagerly, clumsily, on the back of his neck.

The flatulent man straightens; the silvery pelt vanishes beneath his collar; he is holding out his hand to take her orange. May I, he asks, and when she relinquishes it, she finds that all the pleasure she once took in her disfigurement—the pleasure of being waited upon, petted, made a spectacle of—all that pleasure has disappeared.

TO EVERYONE'S SURPRISE
, the photographer, whose fingers are nimble, whose tread is light, whose every movement is small and inconspicuous, has become suddenly, wretchedly, clumsy. Glass plates slip from his grasp and shatter into fragments on the floor. He trips over carpets, over doorstops; he trips as he is walking down the widow's marble hallways. From his darkroom come cries of misery and exasperation. The performers become impatient; many photographs must be retaken. Their necks grow stiff from holding the same stultifying pose.

It is M. Pujol, however, who suffers most. The photographer is forever bumping into him. When he stumbles, it is always in M. Pujol's direction that he falls. The photographer cannot, it seems, refill his wine glass, wash his hands, extract his handkerchief, illustrate a point, without somehow getting in M. Pujol's way. Their soapy knuckles knock against each other in the basin. They reach for the bottle at the same time, and their forearms brush. During the course of a lively conversation, it often happens that the back of Adrien's gesticulating hand will hit M. Pujol in the face.

The flatulent man finds himself apologizing even more often than he usually does. But the photographer is ungracious; though he is the one who always bumps and crowds, he never asks for forgiveness. He never once says, Pardon me. Instead, he skulks behind a caravan, where he furtively examines his knuckles, his arm, the back of his hand, as if it were he who stood the greatest risk of being bruised.

LOUDER, THE WIDOW SAYS
, leaning forward in her chair.

M. PUJOL IS CHARMED
by his reflection: he appears enormous! There he is, in the still waters of the fishpond, looking nearly as tall as the temple that rises up behind him. He sits down upon its crumbling steps. Of course, he has not really grown; it is only that the temple is perfectly small.

There was once a widow, M. Pujol says, to no one in particular. He is alone.

And it seems that he has gone mad, that failure and humiliation have destroyed his sense, but indeed he has not, or at least not yet, for this afternoon he has an audience, whom he spotted in the mirror of the fishpond. A small figure, unannounced, crouching in the reeds, watching him. She has taken off her stockings and her boots. The hem of her white dress drifts in the water.

And the widow, M. Pujol continues, loved all beautiful things. But she was very old, and decrepit, and had barely the strength to leave her rooms. She said to her gardener, Dig me a pond; I will sit by my window and the sight of it will soothe me. Then she said: Fill my pond with fish, so that I might see their scales flashing in the sunlight.

A voice from the reeds says: I know a widow.

The gardener did as she wished, but one by one the fish began to disappear. The gardener told the widow, There is an orange carp that is slowly devouring the contents of your pond. Unless I kill him, he will eat all the other fish, and you will no longer be able to
look at them. But the widow said: He is the most beautiful; he is my favorite. Let him do as he likes.

A voice from the reeds says: She lives in a very grand house.

So the carp grew to a gigantic size. He spent his days turning lazily about the pond, the sun glinting off his prodigious scales. Reflections swayed across the ceiling of the widow's room, so that now, even from her bed, she could take pleasure in her carp. All summer long he illuminated her ceiling, and when she wheeled herself to the window and peered down into her pond, he seemed to grow even more languorous, even more indifferent, as though he could feel her watching him.

BUT THEN
a thunderstorm descended, and a lightning bolt struck the widow's pond.

Laughter erupts from the reeds. The audience's sense of justice is delighted.

YES; ONE WOULD THINK
the carp had died. The gardener was certain of it: he brought with him a net to drag the fish out from the water. As he neared the pond, he spied a pale shape slipping beneath the surface—not a shape but a shade, belonging perhaps to a ghostly carp. Upon closer inspection, however, the gardener found the fish very much alive; the accident had simply drained him of color.

After his encounter with the lightning bolt, the carp resumed his lazy circles about the pond. Instead of resembling a great golden shield, flashing in the green depths of the water, the fish was now mistaken, by turns, for a sunken chamberpot, an abandoned bedsheet, for the swollen arm of a drowned woman.

FROM THE REEDS
, a voice says: And so the gardener killed the carp. The widow wished him to.

M. Pujol asks, How did you know?

A stone is sent splashing into the water. Madeleine says, This pond doesn't have any fish.

For the first time, M. Pujol notices this. No, he says, it doesn't.

Who is the carp? Madeleine asks.

Oh, M. Pujol says. No one. That story is only to say, I'm afraid of the widow.

THE GIRLS OF THE VILLAGE
have all disappeared. Who will bring in the goats? Who will set the table? Mothers stand in doorways, looking provoked. Their daughters are nowhere to be found, although the twilight is filled with names: Marianne! Sophie! Emma! Beatrice!

Those girls. Wedded to mischief. What will we do with them?

A cry rises up from the far field: Aha!

Papa has discovered them.

And he will bellow; he will make them hurry home. The tall grasses parting, their caps gone askew, they'll come spilling out, red-faced, mock-penitent, grinning with secrets.

But all is quiet. Papa has not made a sound.

He is too surprised to speak. Aha! he had shouted, and at once the girls stiffened—hands outstretched, knees deep in the grass. Now Beatrice sits upright, blinking wildly, petals shedding from her face, her breasts, the dark fall of her hair. She has been laid out on the grass; she has been strewn with flowers. The girls have been tending to her: they touched her skin, and spread her hair; they held a mirror beneath her nose.

Before Papa has even the breath to ask, the girls answer his question:

Nothing, they murmur. It's nothing

BEATRICE IS ENRAPTURED
by rules, especially those of her own making. In the beginning, her rules were simple enough to remember. She had told the other girls: when visiting Madeleine, one must have very clean hands. One must bring her small gifts, such as ribbons or nosegays. When one approaches, the eyes are lowered, the lips whispering, Hush. Then, if you are old enough, and pretty, you might be allowed to arrange her hair on the pillowcase, or stroke her temples with your fingertips. While younger girls should prepare themselves by standing nearby and murmuring, How beautiful.

Now that I think about it, Beatrice had said, you had better practice on me first. That way, if you make any mistakes, I can correct you.

Touch me there, she recommends. And speak more softly. Ow! she complains. You must be more careful. And when you hurt me, you should make up for it with kisses.

The girls listen, and obey. But try as they might, they never seem to master the rules. Someone inevitably laughs; or a pair of fingers gets tangled in Beatrice's hair—all accidents, merely. But this is why practice is necessary, and punishment, too. You must turn ten somersaults. You must be tied to that tree. You must take off your dress and run around in a circle, singing.

And then, the girls ask, gasping and aglow, will you let us see Madeleine?

But even this question forms its own mysterious rule, the girls asking out of neither curiosity nor need but simply habit, in a game where one rule begets another at a pace so dizzying that the outcome has altogether ceased to matter.

ARE YOU CERTAIN
that's me? Madeleine asks, examining the photograph: an unsmiling child punishing a naked man.

The photographer coats a glass plate with collodion; he nods, abstractedly.

When you disappear behind the camera, I tell my eyes: look forgiving. 1 tell my mouth: appear noble. Where does she go, the person who is forgiving and noble and tender?

Adrien, feeding the plate into the dark maw of his box, says, I'm simply taking your picture.

The me in this photograph is not me, the girl insists. She is Madeleine's ghost, pinned here to the paper.

Adrien lurches dangerously; his equipment sways: Are you ready?

But his subject is not satisfied: Who is that person in the picture?

One, two, three, Adrien counts.

Is there another child out there, sulky and cruel, whom you have accidentally captured in your photograph? And is her name Madeleine?

A LONG DRIVE
curves through the estate; it is covered with gravel. When the gypsies first arrived, the wheels of their caravans made a great crunching sound. But the drive has been silent for some time, now; it seems that no one comes and no one leaves; no visitors, no deliveries; nothing interrupts the dream-tedium of days folding in upon themselves, as contortionists do, here on the estate of the widow.

Madeleine rakes the gravel into the dustpan of her hands. By tying her spare drawers at the knees, she has turned them into a sack. As she trudges across the lawn, lugging her drawers behind her, Charlotte sticks her head out from a caravan and says, That looks terribly heavy.

It is! Madeleine replies.

She makes several trips. She remains mysterious.

But she cannot resist, in the midst of her labors, observing to Charlotte: I like to sleep when it's raining outside.

THE STARS AND MOON
do not seem any closer, but the ground looks much farther away, and the roofs of caravans more precarious than expected. Madeleine teeters above the world like a small, drunken seraph. Everyone but she is sleeping.

From below, she hears a moan, a low and plaintive sound rising up through the rooftop, through the soles of her bare feet. M. Pujol is moaning in his sleep, and when she hears this, the sound of loss, Madeleine thrusts her hands deep into her drawers, which she has dragged, with some difficulty, up to these heights.

A fistful of gravel rains down on the caravan.

The moaning ceases, abruptly.

It is just as she predicted! In the darkness, Madeleine glows. And though to her ears the noise is not of raindrops, but simply of gravel rattling across a tin roof, she knows that from below, from the tousled, sheet-tangled bed, the flatulent man hears the sound of rain, and is quieted.

Go to sleep, M. Pujol! she whispers.

Again she digs into her sack.

BETWEEN CLOUDBURSTS
, Madeleine hears the wobble of wheels being rolled across the lawn. She peers down into the dark, indignantly: Who else is awake?

It is the photographer, who stumbles about during the night as he does during the day, like a somnambulist. He looks up at her and staggers forward, pulling behind him the wagon that holds his photographic equipment. Either he is very tired, or else the load is very heavy.

You should be in bed! Madeleine hisses. It's too late to be taking pictures!

The photographer shuffles on, without heeding her, his forehead gleaming dimly. When he reaches the foot of the caravan, and Madeleine leans over the edge of the roof to shoo him away, she sees that the wagon has been emptied of its canisters, bellows, and bulbs. She sees that the wagon has been filled, instead, with gravel. He has come to help.