Sarah Bynum - Madeleine Is Sleeping

everyone’s talent is put to use. Madeleine paddles. M. Pujol moans. Charlotte plays. The photographer composes. He, too, has succumbed to the widow’s proposition. His name is Adrien, and he is the younger brother of a famous and sought-after man who practices the same trade as he, except with greater success. That celebrated photographer counts among his sitters Victor Hugo, Gustave Flaubert, the divine Sarah Bernhardt. It is thanks to him that Adrien now finds his second-rate skills in demand. As assistant to his more capable brother, he has toured the catacombs and sewers of Paris, taking pictures underground, learning to illuminate dark places. Places no darker than the widow’s drawing room at night. Adrien shyly takes hold of Madeleine and turns her face to the light. She rustles when he moves her, layer upon layer of starched petticoat, shiny frock, drooping bow, rising up around her like froth on boiling milk. She submits to his touch with a tender complaisance, as if she likes nothing better than being arranged. But now he must fix the sad and pale-faced man. Try as he might, the photographer cannot make him understand. He must arch his back so; he must let his head drop between his arms; he must appear more dog-like. It is as the widow wishes. In exasperation, Adrien presses his hand into the small of M. Pujol’s back: Like so! He withdraws his hand, in fear. The shock of this man’s skin against his fingertips: it is something he has not felt before. Through the camera’s round eye, the man is bright as a pknet, his naked body whiter and more brilliant than the explosion that, for a single hot second, illuminates the room.

if this were a myth, then Madeleine would be the swan: beating, fingers webbed, with all the powers of a god. And M. Pujol? He is overtaken; he is hot with shame.

In the starlight, behind the shrubbery, M. Pujol practices his scales. Although his backside has now been put to other uses, and the only sounds he utters are those involuntary moans, he dreams of one day returning to the stage. What a pity that the widow expresses no interest in his true talent. If only she could hear his repertoire: this the timid fart of the young girl, this the bride on her wedding night (very litde) and the morning after (very loud), this the dressmaker tearing two yards of calico, this die storm clouds thundering in the sky, this the cannon defending the coastline. Surely, it would delight her. Surely, she could sponsor his triumphant return! He confides to Madeleine: I think if I were to do one or two vocalizations…. But it is hopeless. The widow is a woman of voluptuous tastes and wide experience; only the prudish could take pleasure in his gift. The body’s eruptions, he realizes, hold no power over those who have moved beyond embarrassment. How terrible it is to recognize that one’s brilliance rests solely upon the small-mindedness of others. M. Pujol’s head droops from his long and elegant neck. The widow has selected him, it seems, for no reason other than his William II moustache, his Ledaen body. His expression of sweet, dreaming melancholy.

the burn of the chestnut too hot from the fire? The sting 0f a wasp in late summer? The prick of a burr, stuck in your side, as y0ll crash through the brambles? Adrien peers at his inflamed fingertips. No, that’s not it. That’s not it at all.

after the last candle has been extinguished, and the widow has withdrawn to her chambers, the performers gather on the lawn, where they listen to the flatulent man tell stories of celebrity and betrayal. M. Pujol, once so reluctant to speak of his past, has been changed by his rather precipitous decline. He is now possessed by the need to recount his days in Paris; he must make his companions understand that his life has not been one spent upon the hands and knees. He is most emphatic on this particular point. I was a man of great stature, he says, flinging his arms high above his head. I always performed upright! I had a pretty little English carriage, a cabriolet drawn by a mare named Aida, and when I drove it through town, dressed in my very best, I was recognized and saluted wherever I went. People loved to joke, Is that Le Petomane who just passed? With my name at the top of the bill, the theatre prospered, the owner and the manager growing fat off the ticket sales and lavishing praise on me, who had brought them such good fortune. They hosted extravagant parties after my performances, their stiff shirtfronts turning scarlet with spilt wine, pomegranate seeds, the dribblings of fuddled dancing girls. What a wind-fall! they would toast, their shouts of laughter hurting my ears and making me tremble with disgust. So I would beg indigestion, and the manager would shuffle me out. Aida would then take me home, her hooves clocking along the empty streets, and I would try to improve my spirits by recalling the precise moment when the audience burst open before me. I am Le Petomane! I would tell myself. I am a source of astonishment and delight!

until the arrival of an impostor, M. Pujol sighs. Marguerite looks up sharply from Madeleine’s hands, which she is dressing with a halm made of beeswax and camomile. I’m quite sure that Oiler, wily man that he was, recruited her from the brothel he frequented. She called herself La Femme-Petomane and, of course, she was entirely fraudulent. Oh, the trickery made possible by a woman’s attire! A woman, after she has completed her toilet, is like a house of illusions: a thick waist is turned slender, a shallow bosom appears ample, nothing is as it appears! The false petomane was no different. ‘Within the dark recesses of her skirts, she hid a wind-making device, perhaps as simple as the bellows one finds beside the fireplace. Because her emissions were of an artificial nature, they necessarily lacked the musicality and nuance of my own, but this is a distinction that the public failed to make. How they loved her! How they laughed at her crudities! You must remember that I always conducted myself with the utmost dignity and restraint. This she dispatched with immediately, and the audience seemed not to miss it, but instead roared all the harder at seeing a woman perform the feats that I had invented and perfected. The very fact of her femininity seemed only to heighten their shock and their pleasure. A broken man, I was taken in by our kind benefactress, and thus I find myself a member of this charming company.

m. pujol offers Marguerite a bow, which she accepts with a shrug of her shoulders. Yes, we are all tricks and illusions, she wryly observes. As opposed to you, who are naked, and utterly without artifice. The flatulent man blushes.

and so does Madeleine. And to flush this way, for his sake— as though a blush were contagious, as though it could spread like Roman fever through the night air — it alarms her. She does not understand what is happening. She wrestles her hands away from Marguerite, then flees, racing across the black lawns, seeking water, a fountain, a fish pond, troughs in the stables, the pump outside the kitchen door — just water, please. Away she runs, made swift fay terror, looking for a cool, dark place; for wetness; relief. She has felt this once before: this slow, corrosive bum.

M. pujol tosses an orange high into the air. He believes he is alone; he hums a tune; he tosses the orange higher and higher, so that when it grazes the foot of a dryad frisking on the ceiling, and a litde bit of painted plaster comes tumbling down from above, M. Pujol freezes, and then, with the toe of his elegant shoe, guides the bit of plaster behind a column. He drops the orange. Are you going to eat that? Madeleine asks. She is standing outside in the sunlight, a small fierce shadow looking in. Oh yes! The flatulent man stoops to retrieve it. What a pleasure it is, he says, to eat an orange in the afternoon. Seating himself on a wrought iron chair, he presses his thumbnail into the rind. Madeleine continues to stare at him, hungry and implacable. Forgive me, M. Pujol cries in embarrassment. We will both have oranges! And moving through the trees, he cups oranges in his hands, brings them up to his nose. After sniffing, he decides; he grasps and pulls; the little tree bends forward and then snaps back, shivering. Catch! he says, throwing the orange at the girl, the orange arcing like a sun, the girl catching it in the great dull mitts of her hands. He resumes peeling. She looks down at her hands, at the intractable orange. His long fingers ease the rind from the flesh, sending up a mist, a sigh, a tearing sound. As M. Pujol peels, he releases into the air the scent of oranges. He is absorbed in keeping the rind whole, a rough skin unfurling from his fingers. He glances up at Madeleine. She is still standing there, mute, studying her orange. Oh! His embarrassment is complete. Would you allow me? he asks, starting from his chair, reaching out to the girl, spilling his orange from his lap, and watching it bounce across the floor. M. Pujol falters, unsure of whether to rescue Madeleine from her predicament, or the orange from the floor, which he then might offer to her in apology. But the orange will be dirtied and bruised; the girl will be made more unhappy; the orange has rolled its way to the feet of the girl. He must pick it up, must make amends, and so he stands and bends at the waist, attempting in his confusion to both bow to the girl and recover the orange, and as he does so, as he is bending over, she sees the soft hair growing along the back of his neck, just as it would on the neck of a boy, and she is surprised. petted usury conversion