Sarah Bynum - Madeleine Is Sleeping

Madeleine’s hands dig deeper, searching for a tin of pastilles, a pair of opera glasses, the buckle from a stagehand’s belt. It would be lovely to find something useful, something with which she could begin: like a nail. The earth feels cool as she shovels through it. But then, there in the soil, is something warm. And twisting. It wriggles against her with curiosity, or possibly affection. It is not, she hopes, a worm. She would not like to have such a humble thing attached to her. For when she moves her hands through the dirt, it follows. If she pulls herself rudely enough from the ground, if she stamps her feet and flaps her arms and trembles all over like a tambourine, then perhaps the worm will think better of the arrangement, and leave her alone. Madeleine shakes so hard that the sky turns colors. She wants to make herself dear to her new appendage. She shakes so hard that even once she stands still, the world keeps tilting, fireworks keep bursting, her limbs stay unfamiliar to her, and when she lifts her dirty hands before her face, she does not recognize them. Her paddles, which have taken her to places she would never otherwise have seen, have disappeared. Her two great mitts! In their place she finds ten wiggling digits: slender and stretching and bumping into one another in their newness. How funny, Madeleine thinks, to go looking for a little knife, and then a nail, and to find instead, in the cool black soil, her fingers.

I can button, she thinks, and unbutton! I can light a match hold a cigarette, and wave it languidly in the air. I can point at a person with whom I disagree. I can scratch a small itch. I am capable of pinching; also, of peeling an orange. I can take a photograph; remove a splinter; tuck a piece of hair behind my ear. I can be of help. I can grip, between my forefinger and my thumb, a penny nail. I can hang a curtain. I can build a riser. I can write, in tall red capitals, the letters of his name.

lT is A miracle. The full weight of it falls upon her. I am like Michel, she says aloud to the barn. In her cathedral, in her town, there is a picture of him in the window. Once, on a Sunday in summer, a blade of empyreal light illuminated his melancholy face, and she instantly recognized it as her own. Why, it’s me, she says to herself, full of wonder. I have been looking at myself all along. For she has been restored, like the saint, to wholeness and perfection. Madeleine possesses two lips, two eyes, two arms, and now — ten immaculate fingers. And the face will no longer be lengthened in sorrow, but bright and fluid with color. She will stand up from her family’s pew and walk towards the stained glass, her eyes locked with her own. At the altar, she will pivot on her toes and face the congregation. Look upon me, she will say. And even the devout will find it difficult to remember the suffering she has endured.

but then, staring Down at her miraculous fingers, Madeleine remembers for what purpose they have been restored to her. Chastened, she corrects herself. She begins again: The footlights will illuminate his once melancholy face. And the face will no longer be lengthened in sorrow, but bright and fluid with color. Look upon me, he will say. I am Le Petomane. And stepping out from the dark wings of the stage (the stage that is now in her power to build), Madeleine will pass through the audience (the audience that is helplessly attracted to her stage) as lightly as a breath of air. She will approach a stout man sitting in the front row, his brimless hat balanced on his knees, and she will touch his chest, with all the tenderness in the world. His stiff woolen vest will peel away like an orange rind, and she will graze her fingertips against the polished, orderly bones of his rib cage. Beneath, she will find a curled and pulsing bud, and when she blows on it, it will begin to unfurl its sanguine petals, one by one. Gently touching with her newfound fingers, she will travel down each row of seats, and when she looks around she will notice, with pleasure, that the flowers she has uncovered are heliotropic, and that their delicate heads nod to M. Pujol wherever he goes, following his movements like those of the sun. Stunned, sitting in an abandoned barn, her fingernails black with dirt, Madeleine imagines this: their hearts unfolding before him.

mother discovers that it is difficult to move. The fire has gpne cold. The floor is unswept. The soft insides of pears have left sticky trails on her windows, and flies have come to congregate. But when she tries to rise from her seat, she cannot. She has only strength enough to turn her head slowly from side to side, observing die disrepair, how swiftly it has overtaken her house. Since when did crumbs litter the floor of her larder? Since when did that smell of spoilt milk fill the air? It seems that she also has strength enough to dap. Children! she cries, clapping her hands. She hears a scuffling overhead; then a silence. Children! she cries again, and finds that she is able to stamp her foot against the floor. One by one they descend down the ladder, her scuffling children, her shamefaced children, who appear to have as much difficulty raising their heads as she does lifting herself from her chair. Beatrice, she says. The fire. Jean-Luc, she says. Help your father. Lude, she says. Wash the windows. Claude, she says, to the child who is shuffling his feet the most miserably. Sweep the larder. And to the youngest, to Mimi, she says, Bring me apples and pears. But Maman, cries Mimi, before anyone can stop her: Nobody buys your preserves anymore. It is true, a fact so plain that it must not be spoken. The children watch their mother in consternation. She is closing her eyes; she is nodding her head; she is accepting the truth of the remark. Collectively, the brothers and sisters wish for fury. But rather than inflaming her, the statement exhausts her, and she sinks face slackening, back into her chair. Silendy, Mimi vows: I will fill a hundred baskets for her.

Madeleine measures, placing one foot before the other. Here will stand the proscenium. Here, the orchestra pit. And over there, she would like for M. Pujol to have a private dressing room. But with such luxuries, where will she put the seats? Red upholstered seats, with armrests made of velveteen! She places one foot before the other. She imagines the possibilities. She counts twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, and then her toe bumps into the wall. The wall says: This is only a bam. Maybe a platform made of apple crates, maybe a sheet hanging from the rafters, will have to do. The walls of the barn are ribbed with light. From between the planks, slats of daylight fall onto the floor, and as Madeleine measures, she notices how they flicker, the narrow strips of light beneath her feet. She puzzles over why that should happen, why they should darken and then go bright again, as if each slim ribbon were experiencing its own miniature eclipse, the moon passing in rapid succession from one slat of light to the next. Why should such a thing occur, Madeleine wonders, and with untimely delay the answer arrives at the same moment she realizes: I am surrounded. Or, more generally speaking, the barn is surrounded. By a throng of onlookers, short in height, and long accustomed to moving soundlessly. She feels their presence like a moist breath, the air thickening with their shallow panting and their running noses, with the effort it takes for them to stand still. Their faces press against the cracks in the wall. Their knees and ankles itch in the spiky grass. And she is not afraid, because they are only children. What do you want? she says to the four walls. Claude saw something, replies the farthest. He said it made him feel strange, says a voice nearby. We wanted to see it, too, says another. Is he here? Madeleine asks, heart rising. Did he bring you? She turns about in a circle, asking of the four walls, Claude? 1 Oh no, explains the far wall: He’s in trouble. They all are. They cannot leave their yard. Madeleine fights disappointment. She says, So. Do you feel strange? They take a moment to consider. A litde, says one. Not as much as I had hoped, admits another. I feel precisely the same! the far wall declares. In that case, says Madeleine, you should make yourselves useful She strides over to the barn door. The children swiftly shadow 1 her, rushing in from all sides like water circling towards a drain, and she throws open the door. They are ready to meet her; they stand ar attention. So many of them, looking famished and eager, resdess J and sly, capable of enormous secrets. They look exacdy like the children she remembers. The following, Madeleine says, are things that I need.