Madeleine Is Sleeping

by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

  Substitute

  IF YOU WERE M. Pujol, Madeleine says, I would reach out my hand to you. Like this.

  If you were M. Pujol, Adrien says, I would press my mouth against your pulse. Like this.

  If you were he, she says, I would cup your chin in my fingers.

  If you were he, he says, I would take those fingers into my mouth.

  Then my mouth would envy my fingers, she says.

  Then your mouth must usurp your fingers, he says.

  And then, she says, I would do this.

  Hunter

  FROM HER WINDOW, high above the world, the widow spots them, the child and her photographer, entangled in the shadows of the shrubbery. And as she watches them, she feels the briefest flicker, like the singe of a match tip's flame: quickly, now, before it's gone! She tugs upon the bell rope that dangles beside her: a photograph must be taken; the moment must not be lost. Yes, here is the hind of her nighttime hunts; she has tracked it down at last.

  Then she laughs at herself, at the futility of her agitated summons. For how can he take the picture, when he is the picture? All of her efforts, if she is to be truthful, are marked by this same sense of impossibility. The more furiously she pursues, the more surely it recedes, this fugitive scene, visible only when glimpsed askance, out of the corner of her rheumy eye. Her latest project has been a failure; she had hoped that this marvelous invention, this alchemy of chemicals and light, would assist her in her pursuits, but now, as her eyes graze over the photographs, she discovers that they offer her nothing. And if they do, it is only by accident: in one picture, the fringe of the carpet is caught between the man's toes; in another, the child's mouth is open, as if she is about to speak: these are the details that prick her. But they are scarce among this series of tableaux, lovingly arranged, though ultimately of no poignance or excitement to her.

  Once she had been interviewed by a scientist, who was anxious to include a grandmother in his study of libertines, already several volumes long. He had amused her with the exacting nature of his questions, and his demands that she should include even the most scabrous details in her accounts. She had teased him, she couldn't help it, so strenuous were his attempts to manage her perversions, to render them immobile. What you must finally recognize, she said, what you must understand about my predilections (the scientist leans forward: at long last, the secret!) is that my desire does not take; it turns, as milk does.

  For that reason, she feels only a little sad when she finds, slipped beneath her door, a note written in an elegant hand:

  Please forgive me. I have left in search of a Faculty of Medicine who might take interest in my unusual condition. I plan to donate my body to Science, so that I can say my life has been of some use to Humankind.

  Insane

  BUT THE CHILD and her photographer are inconsolable. They cleave to each other as orphans do; they seek comfort in the photographs' melancholy caress. Adrien has laid out all his pictures on the grass.

  This image, he tells Madeleine, is literally an emanation of M. Pujol: from his body radiates light, which then inscribes itself on the very surface which in turn your gaze now touches.

  They find solace only in the certainty that his body still touches them through the medium of light. But it is a solace that, the photographer knows, will lead slowly and inexorably to madness. The pictures before them serve not only as agonizing reminder of his absence but irrefutable proof that he did in fact exist for them, that his skin did burn upon the man's fingertips, that his flesh did shrink from the girl's stinging touch. This proof is what they cannot bear. He was indeed here, the photographs whisper. But he is no longer.

  A decision is reached, in the name of sanity. The widow finds beneath her door another note, much less elegantly penned. Two more of her assistants have decamped.

  Charivari

  ALL THE WORLD IS ATREMBLE: the dogs barking, the bells clanging, the fine white scent of orange blossoms everywhere, and Jean-Luc scuttling out the door before Mother can do anything about it. He is off to join the other boys, who are stealing enough copper pots and pans to deafen the whole town, when tonight they go marching through the streets, banging and hallooing till the dawn.

  It is in this moment of confusion, with every child in motion around her, the girls leaning out the windows, waving, and the boys snatching up her spoons, that Mother looks at Madeleine. How still she is, how quietly she sleeps. Her breathing barely lifts the covers.

  She is so beautiful when she sleeps.

  The children stop. They stare at their mother. They have not heard this said in a very long while.

  Smooth your sister's coverlet. Arrange her hair on the pillowcase.

  And Mother gazes at the girl with a calm affection, as if their silent quarrels were now coming to an end, as if that lush and troublesome body had been restored, by miracle, to its former beauty and perfection.

  Outside, the church bells cease their clamor. On the stone steps leading down from the chapel, a bride and groom stand blinking stupidly in the sunlight.

  Why did I never think of it before? Mother wonders.

  Heavensent

  THE TWO TRAVELLERS, sheltering beneath a chestnut tree, are startled by a crashing, a harried thrashing, from above. It is Mme. Cochon, struggling to free herself from the embrace of an amorous upper branch. Her dainty wings churn the air, her stout legs kick furiously, and from a neighboring tree, a wild cloud of sparrows rises up in sisterly agitation.

  Mme. Cochon! cries Madeleine, whose earthbound perspective grants her insight into the situation. Your skirts! They are caught!

  The enormous woman heaves herself over so that she can unlatch her hem from the tree. Oh, bother, she gasps, this is always happening.

  Madeleine, in her excitement, treads upon the photographer's toes. A face from home! It has been so long. She trots backwards and beams up at the woman, whose buttocks bob among the leaves like the hull of a capsized ship. With a crackling of twigs and a fluttering of wings, Mme. Cochon pulls herself upright.

  She calls down to Madeleine, Your mother doesn't know what to make of you!

  The girl grins back at her: She never did!

  Adrien tugs at Madeleine's sleeve: he hopes to take advantage of the fat woman's surprising appendages. From up there, she can see the entire world, or at least a sizeable portion of it.

  Mme. Cochon! Madeleine hurls her voice at the sky. Have you seen a tall and pale-faced man pass this way? Carrying a porcelain basin, a length of rubber tubing, a silver candlestick, and a small family of flutes? You would have noticed his elegant costume; he dresses beautifully, no matter what time of day.

  The fat woman sails upward, always happy to oblige.

  The two travellers wait below, his hand clasping her paw.

  A black tailcoat? Mme. Cochon hollers. Satin breeches ruched at the knee?

  Oh yes! That's him!

  The woman, high above them, points towards the horizon: He is headed for the hospital at Maréville.

  The Hospital

  RISING UP FROM behind a hill, the hospital at Maréville has as many windows as it does patients; its hundred eyes glitter in the morning sun. For every patient, a window, floating high above his head—too high out of which to climb, or even to gaze. When passing by the hospital, one never sees a crazy face pressed against the pane. One is never made aware of the hundred lives contained within. Yet the feeling persists that the building, so modern and brick and glittering with glass, is animated by a peculiar intelligence, and that while the rest of the world is sleeping, at least one of those eyes is still open, and wakeful, and watching.

  The hospital eschews all reminders of its past. Do not call it the madhouse, or the lunatic asylum. Ail that was once dark and hidden and misshapen is now frankly examined in the light that comes streaming, unchecked, through these flashing windows. It is the Institute for the Study of Aberrant Behaviors and Conditions. When Madeleine rings at the front gate, a ruddy, uniformed matron appears, bringin
g with her the smell of laundry soap, square meals, sanitary practices. Her glance takes in the girl, the photographer, the little wagon brimming with canisters and bellows and bulbs. She spies the crippled hands.

  Come in, the matron says. Come in.

  Request

  MOTHER CONSULTS THE CHEMIST, once again. In his opinion, her letter should request M. Jouy's release for reasons of utmost urgency. When writing correspondence of an official nature, he says, it is better to remain vague.

  He returns his spectacles to the bald crest of his head.

  No mention of marriage? Mother asks.

  The officials at Maréville might not approve, he says.

  Approve? Mother says. Who are they to approve? They should stick to drawing pictures.

  In a distinctly dispirited way, the chemist rearranges his selection of eye droppers.

  Nevertheless, he says, the fate of M. Jouy is in their hands, and if you desire him for a son-in-law, you must first arrange for his release from the hospital.

  Would it be dishonest, Mother asks, to describe myself as a member of the family?

  If I were you, he says, I would prefer the phrase: interested party.

  He sees that Mother is about to object.

  Misapprehended

  OH NO, ADRIEN SAYS, ALARMED: We are not here as patients!

  Madeleine shakes her head. A terrible mistake is about to be made. The matron waits beside the door, rustling her skirts.

  Then why are you here? The director squints at them from across the expanse of his formidable desk.

  This is a good question. As the matron ushered them down the gleaming hallways, it became clear to the photographer that rescuing M. Pujol would require a great deal of cleverness and strategy. The wheels of the little wagon had squealed upon the polished floor; a series of doors had stretched far away into the distance. The flatulent man had not, as they expected, been waiting for them in either a tower or a dungeon, rattling his chains and crying out their names.

  Well, Adrien says weakly. I am a photographer.

  He indicates the wagon resting beside him: I take photographs.

  Advances

  THE DIRECTOR SMILES. Though his eyes are sunken, and his eyebrows overgrown, he has all the eagerness and bloom of a young man. It is he who oversaw the installation of the windows. Besotted with everything that is novel and newfangled, he sees, in the little wagon, the possibility of further innovation.

  What do I spend my days in pursuit of? he suddenly asks. I seem to lead a sedentary existence—he flaps his hands at the desk, the matron, the shelves of books—but mine is a life devoted to the chase. Other doctors deal with sickness in all of its physical manifestations: a swollen abdomen, a blistered tongue, a scaly patch of skin. But illness does not always write itself upon the body; the sickness I search for is hidden deep within the brain. Sometimes it rises to the surface. Sometimes the face betrays what the body conceals. But these moments, these betrayals, last no longer than an instant. They come, they go, they pass over the patient, darkening and brightening his face like clouds gusting over a meadow. How is it possible, then, to tell what he is suffering when the visible signs of his inner disorder appear so fleetingly upon his face?

  I don't know, says Adrien.

  Neither do I, says Madeleine.

  Removing himself from behind his desk, the director crouches down beside the wagon. He strokes the black box that sits among the canisters and bellows and bulbs, and his touch is reverent, as if the box might abruptly snatch off the first joints of his fingers.

  One science, he says, in aid of another.

  You, he says to Adrien, can capture that which I so hotly pursue.

  Adrien fails to understand.

  You will take pictures! the director says. You will photograph my patients. Their symptoms will show themselves in your photographs.

  Adrien nods, mystified.

  But who, the director asks, and stares at Madeleine, is she?

  My valuable assistant, the photographer answers, as Madeleine slips her hands beneath her thighs.

  Aroused

  AFTER LEADING THE photographer and his assistant to the staff quarters, the matron pauses in the midst of her bustling activity. She passes down a corridor that, to all appearances, is no different from any other. She stops by a door that is no different from all other doors.

  Why, then, does she grow damp about the armpits?

  He is, after all, only an idiot.

  But the matron, against her better judgment, has come to believe that there is something else, something yearning and human, something trapped inside that lumpy body, struggling to escape. She believes that she sees it in his eyes, the moment when he first awakes, and in his hands, when he defends himself from her washcloth. She felt it, perhaps, when he twisted away from her, and she pursued him, towel steaming; she felt it snuffling against her skirts, burrowing towards the warmth of her red hands. Something fierce and intelligent and alive.

  The matron reports to the director: M. Jouy is in no condition to leave the hospital. He must remain under our care. The family will have to be informed.

  Foiled

  THE CHEMIST READS THE LETTER, and then studies Mother, her bosom hefted dangerously atop his delicate display cases, with a little bit of dread. He takes two steps backwards.

  Madame, he says, I hate to be the bearer of disappointing news.

  I am not afraid, Mother says.

  I regret to inform you that your request has been denied, the chemist says: M. Jouy cannot leave the hospital.

  And the chemist is relieved to note that Mother appears unperturbed.

  I have asked them politely, is all she says, before turning on her heels and leading her children in a majestic exit, each child clutching a caramel in one hand and an ingenious tin chicken in the other.

  Moustache

  HAVING FINISHED OFF her bonbon, Beatrice raises her objections.

  Madeleine belongs to us, she says. Why must we give her away?

  Because, explains Mother, in good families, such as ours, it's best that girls of a certain age, and of certain experiences, be married.

  But there are hundreds of nicer husbands, says Beatrice. What about that man who appeared at our door, the one with the moustache?

  It is out of my hands, Mother says. Madeleine herself has chosen M. Jouy. In Nature's eyes, he is already her husband.

  If that were true, Beatrice thinks, then he would be married to half the girls in our village.

  Besides, Mother adds, he is agreeable, and undemanding. He will not complain about a wife who is often asleep.

  Always asleep, says Beatrice.

  He will not complain. Because how can he? When he himself is—

  Lacking?

  Yes, that's a fair way of putting it. To bring two people together, two incomplete people, is the right thing to do.

  She was not always lacking, Beatrice thinks.

  And do not forget, says Mother, what a help M. Jouy will be to have around the house. Remember how we used to pay him, in the springtime, to clean the shed? A son-in-law is what your father needs. One who is strong, with a healthy back, and who can keep him company.

  Oh yes, says Beatrice, mechanically. It's the least we can do for Papa.

  But you stay away from him, Mother warns.

  Of course, Beatrice murmurs, lashes lowered.

  Inmate

  MADELEINE LOOKS FOR M. Pujol. She is, however, too short. Even hopping up and down, she still cannot see through the small, paned windows at the top of every door, windows through which the director can peer solicitously at the patient residing within. She has worked her way down the corridor, and every window, it turns out, has been constructed at the same impossible height.

  Madeleine wishes to see the madmen and madwomen who live inside the hospital. She expects that behind each door there exists an amazing affliction: the Tigress, who paces her cell and feasts upon raw livers; the Dromedary Boy, who fancies himself capable
of drinking a well dry; the Walrus Woman, who wept so profusely, and at so little provocation, that her eyeteeth grew to the very length and consistency of tusks. A man fluent in eleven languages, yet unable to communicate with anyone. A girl who cannot seem to stop sleeping, who rustles and stirs but never wakes.

  The photographer, however, is six and a half inches taller than Madeleine, a height from which he can peer through the windows, only to discover the most ordinary of inmates. To visit this hospital, he thinks, is to visit the catacombs and sewers of Paris; it is to stroll down their broad avenues, admiring the symmetry of their arches. Baron Hausmann has constructed, underground, a city nearly identical to the one above: airy, harmonious, prosaic—a place that invites slow perambulation, the opening of shops, the planning of excursions. Touring through this subterranean city, one is struck by the decorative arrangement of skulls, set into the walls like Portuguese tiles, and the shininess of the piping through which the sewage rushes.

  And here, in the hospital? The Walrus Woman is suffering from neurasthenia; the Man from Babel is afflicted by dementia praecox; the Tigress, a brain gone spongy from syphilis.

  Pose

  THE DIRECTOR ATTACHES, by means of very small clamps, the ends of six narrow wires to the fleshiest parts of a patient's face. These wires connect the patient to a highly sensitive machine, the newest of its kind, which is too large to appear in the photograph itself. The machine looms darkly in the background; it takes up an entire wall. Three serious men stand before it, adjusting its dials. Or this is the impression that the director hopes to effect. The wires do not, in fact, lead anywhere. They protrude crookedly from the patient's head, and this, combined with the dullness of his eyes, suggests a mutinous automaton, one who has tugged himself free from the clockwork. While those that are wild-eyed, what they resemble most are gorgons.