Here she felt connected to something, although she wasn’t sure just what. But there was something about this Madame Métier and her cremes which she found deeply satisfying, and helping her get “set up” so she could develop more cremes had meaning for Mademoiselle Objet. For although she herself had no understanding whatsoever of either botany or medicine, she sensed that something important was happening here. Her own hands were the testament.
“There, I think that’s enough for today,” said Mademoiselle Objet, who had now put everything back on the table in orderly rows. “Except for this shell. Which doesn’t quite seem to belong. Shall we throw it away?”
“Oh, no! Not the shell.” said Madame Métier, whose demeanor seemed suddenly to be verging on panic. “It’s very important. It definitely has to stay.”
“But what for? It doesn’t belong to any of the other categories of things. It’s not a botanical item. It’s not a good storage container either. Look,” she said, “the petals in it have all gotten dusty. They’re ruined.”
“It was a gift,” said Madame Métier. “It’s the only thing, as a matter of fact, which I am certain belongs. And its placement is at the very center of the table.”
It was strange, Madame Métier’s being here at the end, so emphatic and clear about the placement of something. To Mademoiselle Objet the shell was a totally irrelevant item, but after Madame Métier had placed it at the center of her work things, she had to agree that it stood there like a sentinel presence which lent the work table a lovely kind of symmetry.
The workroom looked completely different. Mademoiselle Objet felt a deep sense of satisfaction, and within herself a certain unusual calm.
“You have done a magnificent thing here,” said Madame Métier. “You have created a brand new room with your energy and your imagination.”
“I just cleaned up,” said Mademoiselle Objet.
“No, you have invented. With a heart. Tomorrow, because of you, my work will be different. Each thing will begin from a quite different place because of how you’ve arranged things, and so it shall also arrive in time at quite a different destination. Thank you,” she said. “I’ll call you soon to come again.”
CHAPTER 19
Monsieur Sorbonne and Mademoiselle Objet Have a Happy Reunion
When Mademoiselle Objet got home, the little house was filled with a wonderful fragrance. Having contemplated the meaning of his work—that it was meaningless—having picked up the photographs of Mademoiselle Objet he’d dropped off, and feeling relieved by the possibility of Mademoiselle Objet’s employment, Monsieur Sorbonne had gone to the gourmand’s food store, collected a fine selection of items, and was now preparing a sumptuous dinner.
So happy was Mademoiselle Objet about her afternoon’s work that although it was late when she finally walked in the door, she changed from her work clothes and put on the seal-gray wool dress she had worn the first night they went out to dinner.
Monsieur Sorbonne lit candles and put on some music, piano gavottes, on their Victrola instrument, and Mademoiselle Objet very graciously served up the items of food which he had so cleverly prepared.
“You seem different, calm, almost peaceful tonight,” said Monsieur Sorbonne as she sat down across the table from him. “It’s nice to see you this way.”
“It’s quite simple, really,” said Mademoiselle Objet. “I’m beginning to understand. When I have things to arrange, I’m happy. My hands stop itching and I can keep my temper in place. And if I don’t, well, you know what can happen. It’s strange, but spending the day with this Madame Métier and her mess seemed to change things. I feel different.”
This was all most odd, thought Monsieur Sorbonne. Mademoiselle Objet seemed to be in some other state, not quite herself, so quiet and composed she was.
“But did you do any work?” he asked her finally. “And did you get a job?”
“Yes, we did do some work, but I don’t really know if I did get a job,” said Mademoiselle Objet. “The time just went by, and then it was past eight o’clock. And then I came home. All I know is that now I feel peaceful. I had a nice time.”
“I’m happy,” said Monsieur Sorbonne, ‘that something has changed.”
“So am I,” said Mademoiselle Objet. “I wish this could be a real job, that just once, for a long time, like a profession, I could have things to arrange. Consistency. That’s what I need. A routine. Day after day with the same things the same.” She got up then, and cleared the dishes away.
When they had finished their special desserts—strawberry crêpes Suzette and Viennese coffee—he opened the white floss envelope containing the photographs. There, inside it, as if she had never once crabbed or screamed or squawked or scared him half to death, captured in all her loveliness, was Mademoiselle Objet.
Her pretty hands were touching her face; she was smiling ever so slightly. She looked peaceful, and although they were black-and-white photographs, there was a distinctly bluish cast to the crystal heart locket, which hung around her neck.
CHAPTER 20
Madame Métier Goes to the Hospital Again
So heartened was she by the ordering of her room, that the following morning after her usual ceremonies, Madame Métier decided to once again visit the young man in the hospital.
As usual, she pulled up a chair, sat down beside him, and took his hands into hers. His hands were motionless today, unrepentingly still, and as she held them she felt unbearably sad. It was strange, holy, to be in his midst. She was witnessing a mystery and she knew it. His body still partook of life, but his spirit—who knew where it was? Was it like a kite on a string, already somewhere far out in the clouds, already beautifully dancing? In the absolute simplicity of his present stripped condition, he embodied life as only itself, life as just being, pure being.
She knew that soon they would pull off his wires and he would be gone—no more the mysterious silent young man, no longer a man, no longer even a human being. Being overtaken by this thought—that any day now his whole humanness would vanish—she suddenly wanted—as if he as himself were still somehow inside his body, somehow still a person—to say goodbye to him. Closing her eyes and still holding his hands, she began very softly to speak to him.
“I don’t know you,” she said, “who you are or what your name is, how you came to this condition …” She said these words and the young man lay there motionless, immobile on the bed, not a flicker from his closed eyes, not a twitch of his hands. “But I have come here to thank you, because you have touched me very deeply.”
“I came here in need, when I was discouraged. My father died in this room; I came here hoping that somehow he would give me a message. Instead, I found you. You lay here silent and still and allowed me to be in your presence, to sing to you, to touch your head with my hands. This touching and singing was good for my soul. And so I have wanted to thank you.” She paused. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you very much.”
She had just finished these words when his hands seemed ever so slightly to start to wake up. They moved a little, and then as she watched, they moved once again. She could feel the tiny electric impulse she had felt in them just yesterday, starting to spread once again, like the faintest river of energy throughout them.
She was amazed, but went on. “I came here in need. I came to receive. But instead you allowed me to give. And my heart has been filled by this giving. It’s a wonderful thing—a gift in itself—when someone receives what you have to give, and you have done that very beautifully. Received my gift … and so, very deeply, I thank you. My soul also thanks you,” she whispered.
Once again—amazing, but it was true—his hand squeezed back in a kind of distinct acknowledgment.
“I don’t know where you’re going,” she went on quietly, “when you are going, or if the journey will be easy, but I did want you to know … that my love will go with you. Thank you for staying as long as you did. And thank you for receiving my gift.”
She felt ove
rtaken by an immense and tender sadness as she said this. Great round tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped in small luminous puddles on his pale, still hands. No more words were given to her, and yet she still felt unready to leave. And so she stayed on as the dark light shifted throughout the room, making faint patterns on the walls, the sheets, the tubes, his hands.
And then—and she could scarcely believe this—from somewhere, inexplicably, though clearly from inside the room, she heard a small sound of crying, and then in a gurgling whisper, as if rising up through earth or through water, the words: “Thank you. I have waited so long to be loved.”
She opened her eyes and looked up at the young man in the bed, at his still, expressionless face. His hands in her hands were warm now, and seemed, distinctly, to be holding on dearly to hers; and when she looked at his face once again—and she could absolutely not believe this—he seemed to be smiling.
So startled was she by these curious, untoward happenings, that she sat there awhile in silence. But no other sounds came, and although she sat there for many more minutes, he continued to lie there motionless. Finally, she felt ready to go. She slipped her hands free from his. “To where you are going, great love goes with you,” she said once again. Then she passed her hands in a windward motion one last time across his face.
“Thank you,” said the voice rising through earth, rising through water, “I can feel it.”
Madame Métier was stunned. She stood up then, and quietly turned away and then very slowly walked out of the room.
PART III
CHAPTER 1
Madame Métier and Mademoiselle Objet
Three months had passed, and having been so heartened by the initial reorganization of her room, Madame Métier decided to employ Mademoiselle Objet half-time. Thus it was that daily, having done her ordering of the little house she shared with Monsieur Sorbonne, Mademoiselle Objet would go to Madame Métier’s, assist her this way and that, organizing botanical items, transcribing recipes, packing and mailing out cremes, and answering the phone.
Because of her help, Madame Métier had stepped up her work. She had developed several new cremes. Word of her work was beginning to spread. More people were calling to try out her cremes. The television station, having heard once again of her work, called to schedule some interviews and asked if she would make a weekly TV program.
This was very gratifying indeed. Mademoiselle Objet was happy because, given this flutter of activity, she felt assured of her job, which she so very much enjoyed. Working for Madame Métier, she observed, had considerably improved her hands. In fact, in contemplating them somewhat mindlessly one night, she realized that her rash was entirely gone. This seemed quite remarkable because, to her recollection, it had only very infrequently that she had applied the medicinal cremes.
She was content. Joy of joys, she had endless items to catalogue, surfaces to tidy, objects to arrange. And it just went on and on. She never finished her work because there were endless interruptions in the workroom. Having heard the TeleVisions broadcasts, people would simply show up at the door, uninvited, with aching arms and pains across their heart, a blind spot in one eye or fogginess in both, a life-long stiff neck or fingers that wouldn’t unbend. And with infinite patience—far too infinite, Mademoiselle Objet once opined—Madame Métier would shepherd them in, lead them up the stairs, and then bring them into the Seeing Room.
“The Seeing Room?” Mademoiselle Objet had asked her once, her eyebrows raised and a little turned sideways.
“Yes, the room where I see them,” said Madame Métier, as if all this were actually quite self-evident. The workroom was now so crowded, what with Mademoiselle Objet and all the new cremes that Madame Métier had precipitously opened a bedroom across the hall and turned it into a room where she could, in private, see them. She would take them into the Seeing Room, set them down on a couch or a chair, and let them discuss their ailments. She would make her acquaintance with their complaint by waving a hand like a wing across its painful location, and, once having done this, would barge back into the workroom, rummage through Mademoiselle Objet’s tidily stacked and half-packed boxes, toppling jars, dislocating orders and from time to time disrupting even her own botanical piles. Then, having found the appropriate creme, she would make off with it and disappear across the hall into the Seeing Room.
Mademoiselle Objet was both happy and unhappy about these trains of events. It was wonderful, she thought, the way that all the people showed up, because rarely, if ever, did anyone return who had once been administered a creme. On the other hand, these interruptions were … well … interruptions. They made it difficult for her to keep her objects in place, to mail out all the packages and answer the phone.
It was always the same. The To-Be-Seens would arrive. They would walk up the stairs and then into the Seeing Room. After a while, Mademoiselle Objet would hear things getting very quiet. Sometimes she could faintly detect the familiar sound of the opening of a cremes jar, then a silence (during which she supposed Madame Métier was applying the creme), then afterwards, as if from some strange ancient well, the melodic speaking of words:
“Applying the creme will not be sufficient; you must also open your heart. Someone has wounded you, whom now you need to forgive.
“Here, look at these troubled, folded-up fingers. You must use your hands for giving as well as for taking.
“Relax. A neck is to bend, to be willowy and swanlike, to move with the magic of living.
“Your eyes, my dear—a blind spot—you can’t see yourself with compassion.” Or, “That fog in your eyes—there’s something you don’t want to see—the sorrow, too, in other people’s lives.”
These little meetings would go on and Mademoiselle Objet, across the hall, would feel always a mixture of peace and irritation. She was irritated by the endless interruptions and untoward upheaval of her objects, and yet at times she herself felt strangely mesmerized, as if the cells in her body had taken on a slightly different attitude, been ever so minutely rearranged.
One day, after a great many To-Be-Seens, she was especially fretful and impatient. Why were there always so many of them? Why did it all take so long? Why did Madame Métier never have any time to help her in the workroom? She could organize it by herself, but with all her in-and-out bargings, Madame Métier continually disarranged things. Sometimes she wanted to scream. Thinking this, she could feel, oncoming, the telltale itch of her hands. She started to scratch and in no time at all she had scratched her hands raw once again.
“What a busy, over-exhausting day,” said Madame Métier, coming in for the final time to the workroom. “Come, let’s have tea. We need a few minutes together before you go home”
“So tell me, are you happy with your work?” she asked, as they sat together half an hour later at the kitchen table, sipping rose petal tea and looking out through the small paned windows, beyond which the apricot tree was in bloom.
“I am,” said Mademoiselle Objet, a little tentatively. “I do like my work. I like arranging things.” She was about to launch into the list of her complaints, but before she could even get started, Madame Métier dived in.
“I’m so glad then,” she said, “because without you I couldn’t go on with my cremes. You are a magician, a wizard of helpfulness. Because of your genius …” And here she looked out the window where in the palest pink the apricot blossoms daintily festooned the naked elegant branches of the little tree. “… I can go on to develop more cremes, to address the manifold hurts and ailings in the world, and to finally discover, in all their miraculous magic, the remedial healing properties that reside in all these beautiful plants.
“Isn’t that wonderful,” she said, so happily concluding, her voice like a beautiful musical bell.
Mademoiselle Objet wasn’t sure. She’d had a terrible day. She’d scratched her hands to shreds and endured the upending of several small boxes of petals and twigs when Madame Métier had come fluttering in to pick out some cremes
. She was desperate to complain, but, once again, before she could start, Madame Métier continued.
“And you, my dear, you are the one who makes it all possible,” she said. “With your magician’s hands.” And here she reached across the table and ever so softly took Mademoiselle Objet’s really very scratched up hands into her own.
“I do like my job,” said Mademoiselle Objet, finally getting a word in edgewise, “but I’m upset! In fact, I see that I’m jealous. I thought it was all the chaos, all the spilled and disarranged things, but now I see it’s the non-stop, endless parade of all the To-Be-Seens. They just show up whenever they want and you just let them in. I can’t stand it! They’re getting soothed. They’re getting healed with your cremes, and I’m all alone in the workroom, scratching my hands to ribbons!”
“I’m sorry,” said Madame Métier. “I know that must be difficult—doing all the tasks of the day by yourself. I can understand why you might be jealous. But, unfortunately, they are here with their needs, and that’s the nature of human suffering. It doesn’t happen on schedule, and it doesn’t lend itself well to organization and control.”
As she spoke, Madame Métier seemed not exactly to be speaking directly to Mademoiselle Objet. Rather, with her white-blonde hair spilling off to one side, she had turned away and was staring out the kitchen window, as if apprehending petal by petal, each individual apricot blossom.
When she had finished speaking and turned her face back into the room, there was a cloud of what appeared to be millions of smaller than pinpoint fragments of light suspended around her. Her whole body, its edges, the seams of her clothes, the memorable angles of her cheekbones, her hair, indeed all her physical dimensions, seemed, as Mademoiselle Objet observed them, to have melted out of focus and all she could see, suspended in the formless luminous haze, were the huge blue circles of Madame Métier’s eyes.
The Magical World of Madame Métier Page 10