Sarah Bynum - Madeleine Is Sleeping

But let old charmers yield to new;

Happy soil, adieu! adieu!

The audience murmurs at her pretty sportsmanship. They crane to examine the castrato, who is perched in the composer’s private box, shielding his smile with a gloved and demure hand. He whispers in the composers ear, promising, Together we will delight them. The composer, prompted, flatters the castrato, but he is interrupted: My timbre is flawless, yes. But it is the cruelty of my condition that will afford them such unbearable pleasures. Marguerite, suddenly immodest, makes a rude gesture from the stage. She grabs her genitals lovingly. She flicks her hand from beneath her chin. Her wrist snaps in the air with wonderful elasticity.

mother is flushed with business. Her preserves fetch an admirable price. Visitors arrive from long distances, grown ravenous and dissatisfied from the stories they have heard. I will not be happy, a dying girl says, if I cannot taste those heavenly preserves. In the city, Mother is told, the rich have made a habit of spreading it on their morning rolls. Mother is always distracted, floured, clotted with fruit meat. She bobs up from her cauldron, dabs her upper lip, and asks the small children: Is Madeleine too hot? They flank the bed and roll up their sleeves as they have seen the midwife do. Small hands press expertly against her throat, her cheeks, her eyelids. Madeleine is snowy beneath their fingertips. But I is she perhaps a little warm right here, by her left temple? We had better feel once more. To be safe.

A handsome man appears at the door, wearing a bristling moustache. He is not craving preserves. He is asking for Madeleine. Claude says, She is sleeping. The handsome man answers, I have come to awaken her. Claude asks, How are you going to do that? I am going to kiss her mouth. Wait a minute. Claude shuts the door.

mother’s fingers twitch as she makes her calculations. Into the tub they bathe in on Saturdays, she stirs enough ingredients for one hundred tarts. Four sacks of flour, a winter’s worth of lard. Begrudgingly, a fistful of salt. Mother kneads the face. Jean-Luc, the legs. Beatrice dimples the torso. And Mimi, the youngest, shapes the two lush arms. Her body grows golden with an egg yolk glaze. Papa’s woolen nightcap goes on last. Suddenly, Mother remembers. She conceals the hands beneath the coverlet

she is perfect, the handsome man says. Mote perfect than I ever imagined. He turns to Mother and plunges into a gallant bow: May 1? Mother says, proudly, If you would. He shoos the brothers and sisters away from the bed and smoothes back his hair, moving with the grace and determination of a maestro. He is nearly overcome with the warmth and fragrance rising from Madeleine’s body and pauses, suspended over her, savoring the moment. He imagines how he will describe it, sitting by the hearth, to their flock of children. He descends for the kiss. It is loud and ardent. Crouched over, he waits for the blissful response, the two unresisting lips that will succumb and then, hungrily, lunge for more. Crumbs speckle his bristling moustache. Simmering preserves fart in Mothers cauldron. The handsome man waits, stiff as a statue. He discovers that he has developed a cramp in his side.

The handsome man is crestfallen. Mother sends him home a pot of preserves. She refuses his money. It’s a gift, she insists.

as a reward for their bravery and cunning, Mother gives the small children delicious bits of the princess’s body. They are eaten with enormous appetite. The brothers and sisters, prickling with crumbs, are allowed to tumble, glutted, into Madeleine’s bed. They nuzzle against her and sigh, tucked into the warm pockets of her body. Madeleine stirs in her sleep. She smiles. Mother watches her and wonders, Is she amused by what she dreams?

when M. jouy placed his cock in her palm, it looked accusingly despondent and she was ashamed, for other girls had spoken of its liveliness. But when she wrapped her sturdy fingers around its girth, it shuddered in her grip like an infant bird. She had learned to ratde the orchard trees so that the weakest nestlings would tumble down into the cradle of her hands, where she found pleasure in the jerk and quiver of their frantic breaths. The organ of M. Jouy felt wondrously similar. It struggled against her tightening fingers with soft, bird-like heaves, and she was comforted by knowing that if her attentions grew too avid, its violent heartbeat would not disappear. Too often, a bird’s pitiful state would excite in her such an awful tenderness (Oh I love you! I love you! the girl keens to the shivering bird) that she would fondle it to death. Buried in a dung heap, so that the cats cannot sniff out its carious flesh, the bird is wet with tears, its body ravished. M. Jouy, she said. I have felt this before. The sad and stately half-wit could not answer, he was so moved by her expertise. She admired how mummy-like he remained while his cock writhed in her hand, as if life had abandoned his body in its eagerness to seek out her touch.

SOPHIE HAD INSTRUCTED her to watch his face crumple, majestic and startling like a damp sheet collapsing from the washline, but despite the girls’ demands — Look, Madeleine, look! — her gize never strayed from her hands, his helpless cock. She wondered at the larger girls who claimed that they were too old, that the game had become dull. She could never outgrow this; she would be drawn back ceaselessly, her curiosity constantly renewed. This she knew: you never tire of decapitating a dandelion and squeezing out its milky entrails. The more the motion is repeated, the more irresistible it becomes. You have no choice but to desecrate a dandelion stalk That is what it is there for. His come smelled of the sweet and musty hay that he slept on. She would kneel down daintily and wipe her hands in the long grass. As she walked home from the secret place, the village dogs would nuzzle her palms, their hot tongues lapping up the fading

what had she done differently? She had modeled herself precisely, on the others: as a very little girl, she stood patiently at the periphery of the ring. As she grew older, she accepted her turn and grabbed hold of M. Joiiy without trepidation: she pocketed his pennies, laughed to see his breeches puddled about his ankles, mimicked his lumbering gait. When they dispersed, screeching like crows, she did too. And when they approached the viliage, suddenly composed and inscrutable, she too fell silent. Were gathering flowers, she announced, when Mother asked. It made a lovely picture: a procession of girls, filing homeward in the dusk, hands stained green from their efforts. Locals who dreamed of migrating to the city now paused and marveled, What was I thinking? I could not live without these simple pleasures.

what had frightened the others? Something in the tightness of her grip, or the way her eyes fed upon the cock. She had betrayed no distaste for the game. The other girls crowed to see his defeat, to see his idiot’s composure dissolve, and then rushed to wipe themselves clean of his ejaculation. But M. Jouy held no fascination for her; she did not feel triumphant when he brayed and snorted; she was occupied only with the soft, stubborn thing clamped in her fists, and grew reluctant to run her fingers through the long grasses. Every Midsummer morning, Mother woke her before dawn and ordered her to kneel down and bathe her face in the dew: it ensures a year’s worth of loveliness, she explained. As a child, Mother had performed the same ritual. When Madeleine wiped M. Jouy off her hands, she left glistening mollusk trails in the underbrush.