Madeleine Is Sleeping
Page 14
You know me as a woman of science. For months you have seen me at work on this volume, in which I've recorded many small and mysterious signs. Now, at last, I wish to share with you my findings.
Holding her book in one hand, gathering up her fat in the other, Mme. Cochon sweeps past the half-wit, and like a dainty lady forced to navigate a puddle, she frowns at the girl lying asleep on the stage, and finally steps over her, as though she were of little matter.
From the first page of her book, the woman reads:
Hush.
And together, the neighbors, the brothers and sisters, together they inhale softly and the barn fills with one endless exhalation of breath: Shhhhhhhhhhhhh.
It is all about to begin.
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Notes
GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT is made to the following authors and works: Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (New York, 1981); Ludwig Bemelmans, Madeline and the Gypsies (New York, 1959); George Eliot, Middlemarch (London, 1872); Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories (New York, 1969); Jean Nohain and F. Caradec, Le Petomane 1857–1945 (Los Angeles, 1967); Andrew Porter, liner notes from Handel: Arias for Durastanti (Los Angeles, 1992); Sir Bart Sacheverell Sitwell, Baroque and Rococo (New York, 1967).
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