Madeleine Is Sleeping

by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

  They are looking for Madeleine, her children whisper.

  Madeleine?

  Mother nearly laughs. How many times must she tell them?

  She raises her voice to the crowd: Madeleine is sleeping!

  And with a sweep of her hand, she ushers them in: the mayor, the priest, the captain, the chemist, and all of the suspicious wives. They stumble over the spoiling fruit that is strewn across the floor. Pressing in on the bed, they examine the sleeper: who takes up room; who attracts attention; who lies there, sighing voluptuously, as Mother stands at the door in an attitude of immense vindication.

  But Madame, says the chemist, in his apologetic voice. I believe you are mistaken.

  Charlotte

  MOTHER ELBOWS HER WAY to the bed. Nonsense! she is preparing to say, and put the conceited chemist in his place, but just as she is opening her mouth, just as she is about to bring him low, the word refuses to come forth.

  Instead she says, It's you.

  It's you, she thinks and reaches out to touch the beautiful woman, fast asleep in the bed where her daughter ought to be. If only you were not sleeping, you could tell me: Did you find it? Did you ever find your voice, your lovely face? Mother thinks, I would like to know.

  But already Beatrice is beside her, pulling her back and murmuring in her ear, It's not my fault. I told her, No. But she was so tired, she wouldn't listen.

  And already the mayor is clearing his throat, the women are massing, the captain is stamping the heels of his boots, when a small, gruff voice is heard from below.

  It is Emma, the mayor's youngest daughter, who is squeezing him by the hand.

  Papa, she says, you must hurry. If you want to have a good seat, you must come to the barn right now.

  Audience

  WHAT AN ACUTE PLEASURE IT IS, to be reunited with one's things. To see one's children sitting straight in their chairs, hair combed, and hands folded in their laps. What a pleasure it is, to nod to one's neighbors, find a spot near the aisle, and adjust oneself in the seat; to enjoy the dimming of lights, ushers disappearing, programs rustling, an old gentleman coughing, and the breathless heavenly feeling that yes, yes, it is all about to begin....

  Ahem

  MADELEINE SPREADS HER ARMS.

  Ladies and Gentlemen, it is with great pleasure that I introduce the phenomenal M. Pujol. Though known to me as a kind and modest man, tonight he will be presented to you in dazzling splendor, as the toast of Paris, as the darling of Algiers, as all the rage in Antwerp and Ghent—simply put, as Le Petomane.

  But before we begin tonight's performance, I would be remiss if I did not warn you of certain medical hazards. Upon witnessing his amazing gifts you will, I promise, feel the unmistakable desire to laugh. You might also experience the following urges: to scream, to cry, to grip your neighbor's knee, to beat your head upon the floor, to tear your clothing into pieces and go rolling through the aisles. Do not, at any cost, resist these urges. To do so would be to jeopardize your nervous systems.

  I say this with a full understanding of his powers. Those who have suppressed their natural responses, who have attempted to maintain a modicum of dignity, have suffered the terrible consequences. Cases of apoplexy, suffocation, paralysis, and amnesia have been widely reported at the scenes of his performances.

  For these reasons I ask you to take a small precaution: You must open your hearts to him, ladies and gentlemen, or risk the utter destruction of your health. It is that simple, and that serious.

  But you have waited long enough. I can see you leaning forward in your seats. With no further ado, I introduce to you my great friend, my guide, my hearts delight ... Le Petomane!

  Star

  AND SO THE CURTAIN is lifted.

  On stage: a large basin of water; a candlestick sitting atop a stool; a length of tubing; and a tarnished little flute with six stops, in order that he may play 'Au clair de la lune.' Everything is ready for him, but the sad and pale-faced man has not appeared.

  From behind her, Madeleine hears the sound of her stage manager grunting. There is a fluttering of wings, and then a man comes stumbling out into the lights, as if propelled against his will by a much greater force.

  He has been stripped of his smock, as Madeleine instructed, and stuffed into a black evening coat, one pilfered from the mayor especially for the occasion. It appears, at one shoulder, that he has already burst a seam. And it appears that Mme. Cochon has tried to smooth the cowlicks in his hair, for the signs of her struggle are everywhere, tiny bits of down clinging to his lapels, as though he has come freshly from wringing the neck of a goose. Yet in his heavy fist he clutches not a bird, but a filthy string, which trails behind him, weighted down by the battered kite at its end. Faded now after months in the sun and the wind, the kite still carries a picture of his cranium.

  As for his face, it wears the dismayed expression of someone who finds himself in the wrong production. He looks back over his shoulder beseechingly, as if Mme. Cochon might whisper his lines, or a tremendous piece of scenery might roll out and flatten him beneath its wheels. How did I end up here? his whole body asks, twitching in the footlights, longing to disappear.

  Upon seeing Madeleine, however, he seems to remember what it is that he is supposed to do. His eyes brighten; he steps forward with courage; he drops the kite string and—like that—it falls away from him, his clumsiness and coarseness and bewilderment, it all falls away. Like that, his purpose is revealed. He must unbutton his breeches. He must guide the little girl by her hand. He must wrap her little fingers around his cock. But doing so, his eyes fill with tears. Great drops of water spill down the half-wit's cheeks. Taking the hands of the girl in his own, he weeps over them.

  Gift

  WHAT HAPPENED to your hands? The question gathers at the back of the barn and sweeps forward in a bitter gust of curiosity. Murmuring, and clucking, and craning their necks, the audience asks what the idiot does not have the strength of mind to say. I am not tonights attraction! the girl protests, though looking down at her hands, she sees that her two great mitts have at last completed their return.

  What happened? surges up once more from the audience. She is suddenly glad that the half-wit is there to keep her from falling. Not wanting to look again at her hands, she turns boldly to the audience: It's nothing! she cries.

  And peering out at them, she discerns their faces: jealous Sophie, who now wears her hair piled atop her head; the bald-pated chemist, who used to slip her sweets behind his counter; the bashful mayor, his youngest daughter perched neatly on his lap; and Mother, Father, her brothers and sisters, among them the foolhardy Mimi, whom Mother is barely restraining from running forward to the stage. Mysteriously, these faces she remembers as so particular are now almost indistinguishable to her, every one of them stricken, every one of them wearing an identical look: of guilt, and most especially of pity.

  She cannot bear to be the object of this look.

  But they have made me special! she insists. They have taken me to places I would never otherwise have been.

  And displaying her mangled hands for all to see, she repeats a phrase borrowed from M. Pujol: An abnormality, to be sure, but I consider it, as should you, a gift!

  The audience remains unconvinced.

  Act

  LOOK, SHE SAYS, I can tuck my feet behind my ears, and waddle about on my hands.

  But when she demonstrates, the spectators simply shake their heads and sigh.

  Listen, she says, disentangling herself, I can make a sound louder than a thunderclap!

  But when she slams her mitts together, only the idiot jumps in surprise; the barn fills with the rustle of people shifting in their seats.

  This I know you will like, she tries again. I can start the bullfrogs singing.

  And blowing into the horn of her hands, she makes a deep, sad, bellowing sound, the lowest note in M. Pujol's scale, and soon enough, rising up in all directions, comes the distant chorus of frogs, jowls swelling with song, their
voices carrying from all the wet corners of the world: the riverbank, the millpond, the water hole behind the barn, the empty pool where a widow once kept her fish.

  The audience finds this stirring performance merely cause for greater pity. Madeleine hears the sound of sniffling, and is enraged.

  Among the rich, she shouts, my gifts are in great demand!

  Encore

  THE HALF-WIT HAS already unbuttoned his breeches. So it is with little difficulty that she him arranges: he must arch his back; he must let his head drop between his arms; he must appear more dog-like. In exasperation, Madeleine presses her hand into the small of M. Jouy's back: Like so!

  There once was a widow, she shouts at the barn, who so favored my talents, she would say of them only, Louder!

  And, Smack! is the sound of a girl's hand falling squarely upon the backside of an idiot. Smack! is the sound of her palm meeting the flesh of his bared cheeks.

  She lived in a very grand house, Madeleine cries. She had Persian carpets in every room. But nothing gave her greater pleasure than the sight of my two hands!

  And once again she displays them proudly, as if they are a hundred times more rare than anything this barn has ever seen. In truth, Madeleine is sorry to have them back in her possession. She is sorry never to have stroked the hair on M. Pujol's neck, and she would have liked to touch the pulsing hearts of her neighbors; in truth, the short life of her ten perfect fingers is causing her own heart to wither, and it is all she can do to keep from weeping stupidly as the half-wit—but she would rather die than show regret, so she brings her paddle down more swiftly on the idiot.

  There once was a man, she declares, who had suffered so much, he found relief, he found solace, in the touch of these hands.

  But the person whom she is paddling now does not shiver and moan as M. Pujol once did. Instead he is making a snuffling noise; he is choking, it seems, on the spill of his tears.

  If only you knew Le Petomane, she tells the audience. If only he were here.

  Inevitable

  IN UTTERING THESE WORDS, she sees him at last, M. Pujol. He is not nearing the barn, nor mounting the stage she has built for him. Nor is he naming the parts of his body, as he trembles beneath the photographer's brave hands. M. Pujol is sleeping: a patient etherized upon a table. The director is quaking slightly in his excitement. He presses the tip of his scalpel against the pale skin, then retreats; he presses again, and draws back his hand. Too quickly, it will all be over; and he would like the anticipation to last forever.

  As for Adrien, the photographer, he is miles away from the hospital at Maréville. His little wagon of photographic equipment still rattles in his wake. He has traveled for many days, he has wandered into a market, and, stumbling over a mangy dog, he has found a stall selling figs—and though he tests the fruit between his fingers, he refuses to think of what he has forgotten to bring with him. Now he is standing in the center of Paris, on the boulevard des Capucines, ringing at the door of his brother. He presses against the bell and listens; he pushes it several times in quick succession, and strains to hear the sound of footsteps on the stair; he leans upon it with his entire weight, but cannot detect any movement, any sign of life, inside.

  Madeleine, she is beating on an idiot: a decent, speechless, lumbering man who had once tucked pennies in her pockets. She lifts her hand, and lets it fall; she repeats the gesture helplessly, again and again.

  Exit

  SEEING AT LAST THE THREE OF THEM—girl, photographer, flatulent man—caught forever thus, and thus forsaken, she thinks, What terrible things we do, in our efforts to be admired.

  And it is with unthinkable strain that she resists the weight of her paddle, the pull of the earth, the stunned gaze of the audience and, most heavy, her wounded pride; it is with every inch of her being that she keeps her hand from falling upon the backside of M. Jouy.

  But the flatulent man, and Adrien—what can she do to stop them? What can she possibly do? To lift the knife from his skin, to lift his finger from the bell...

  Indeed, there is very little she can do. She can neither button nor unbutton. She cannot open a tin of cigarettes, count to ten, wear a ring. Divertissements on the piano, or intricate needlework, or the pretty handwriting that one sees on invitations—all are impossible for her. As is keeping a clean house, slicing vegetables, mending holes in socks and fences, safeguarding neatness and order. Confusion will accompany her, always. And she will never build a single thing again, most especially a stage. Even with these uncanny hands, she has failed them, her audience.

  Stealing a look at their worried faces—Sophie, Emma, the chemist, the mayor, her brothers and sisters, grown so tall, and then, most worn, most loving, the face most known and feared, her Mother!—she drops down upon the stage, stretches out along the floorboards, and closes her eyes.

  She Dreams

  CHARLOTTE AWAKES in an unknown house, in an unknown bed, and wearing someone else's clothes. Sliding out from the covers, she feels the unfamiliar floor beneath her feet, and finds her balance by placing her palm on a table she has never seen. The window, the tree outside it, the bird singing in the branches of the tree. Even the smell of her own skin is foreign: pungent, and dark, and reminiscent of wine.

  The kitchen she wanders through is deserted, the chairs in disarray, but the fire is still smoking, and the pot still warm. What is inside the pot she cannot tell; she lifts the lid and sniffs, takes a spoon from the table and stirs. I will have to try it, she decides, but the taste in her mouth is neither savory nor sweet; it tastes somewhat of apples but also of lamb.

  And entering the yard she sees that it, too, has been abandoned, though only minutes ago, for the grass is still trampled underfoot and the cows in the pasture are lowing. From the empty yard, she passes through the garden and into the overgrown orchard.

  She is not surprised when she fails to recognize the fruit: discolored, misshapen, not quite resembling one kind or another. But it is here, in the orchard, that she sees at last a thing that is familiar to her, leaning up against a tree, as if having waited a lifetime for her to appear. Charlotte takes it in her arms, sits down on a stump, and, embracing it between her legs, begins to play.

  Conversion

  MARGUERITE, UPON the desertion of so many of her entertainers, has fallen back on her own devices. Every night, after all, there is still the widow leaning forward in her chair, expecting pleasure. What is Marguerite to do but unlock her monstrous trunk, exhaling clouds of musk, and shake out her ancient costumes? The general's uniform, the lover's red cape, the burnished breastplate worn by a vengeful son. She also digs up, from the very bottom, her sword, which she slices through the air with untrammeled delight.

  Of course, she must remember how to walk. How to swing her arms, and beat her chest, and meet a comrade heartily. That is easy enough to master. More tedious is wrestling her bosom back into its old restraints, tugging on the powdered wigs; the effort is proven worthwhile, however, upon her discovery that thus disguised, she has managed to enchant the restless widow. She finds an amorous note slipped beneath her door. She finds herself the object of winks, and eloquent glances. In the mornings, when she steps out from her caravan, she is greeted by an avalanche of roses.

  Who is Marguerite, not to welcome love when it arrives at last? Wearing her red cape and brandishing her sword, she courts the widow; she wins her hand; she takes up residence in the very grand house, and learns that if one concentrates, growing a William II moustache is not so difficult to do.

  Nocturne

  A FISHING VILLAGE sits at the edge of a warm sea. The moon beats her path across the waves, across the little boats rocking in their moors, past the shuttered shops and dark cafes, up a flight of whitewashed stairs, and through the open window of a rented apartment. Alighting upon an empty basket beneath the sill, and then a bottle, also empty, the moon comes tumbling into the room. She illuminates a chair, over which is draped an elegant tailcoat, a white butterfly tie, a pair of black s
atin breeches. She uncovers a wagon, inside of which is gathered a small family of flutes. And gliding up to the rumpled expanse of the bed, she finds what she has been searching for: a head resting on another's chest, his pale face loosened in sleep. He breathes deeply. He does not moan. His head rises and falls with the other's inhalations, and the movement is as gentle, as infinite, as that of a fishing boat lulled by the sea.

  Shyly the moon extends her white fingers. She caresses the two men dreaming in the bed. Her hands are so light, and so full of care, that when they awake, they will not even know that they have been touched.

  Stirring

  MADELEINE STIRS in her sleep.

  Stain

  THE BARN IS SILENT. All eyes are fixed upon the sleeping girl. She lies there, indifferent to their gaze: inert, dreaming, blank, detached. Innocence, some might take it for, the audience seeing her as if for the first time, as if she has been restored, through sleep, to her proper dimensions; she is only a girl, asleep, her hands folded neatly on her chest. She looks small. Her monstrous hands look small as well. The people of her town cannot stop gazing at them, at how quietly they lie. They watch her hands with the absorption of a poet, who cannot bear to look away from his mark on the page, the word he has left there.

  Hush

  FROM BEHIND the curtain comes a fluttering, and Mme. Cochon steps out onto the stage. Her hair is dishevelled, her wings are askew, but it is with a beautiful degree of poise that she extracts her diary from deep between her breasts. When she opens the book, its pages fan out like a peacock's tail. The audience sighs at this disturbance, as if she were a noisy member in their midst. But she will not be silenced. She says to them: