Gabriel Blackwell - Madeleine E.

…

Out of this narrative will emerge a chalk outline. It is the body of a woman.

(Zambreno, Heroines )

…

It is Scottie’s idea to go to San Juan Bautista. It is prompted (as was certainly planned) by Judy/Madeleine’s dream, but the timing (noon) and the date (the next day) are left up to Scottie. If he had not thought of San Juan Bautista? If he had planned the trip for the following week? Gavin Elster, in the tower, waiting with a dead woman, his wife, Madeleine, for hours, perhaps days. How, for that matter, did Elster get Madeleine’s body into and up the tower? Does Judy scream because this has not, after all, been the plan? Are we so sure that she knows she is impersonating a dead woman so that that woman’s murder can be covered up? When she is confronted with this gruesome scene (the sun is shining, it is California — the corpse, many days old, cannot be in very good shape), does she scream not because she has been told to but because she is truly frightened? Why doesn’t anyone go up the tower once the body is discovered on the tiles below? How do Elster and Judy make their escape?

Elster pays Judy off, buys her silence. It seems we are meant to believe this is what has happened, their partnership ended with a transaction. But isn’t it much more likely that Judy, having come upon this man waiting patiently in the tower with the rotting corpse of his murdered wife for an eventuality whose timing, even the likelihood of its occurrence, could not realistically have been planned so exactly, is disgusted with Elster — and with herself — and tells him she never wants to see him again? Any money that changes hands does so by way of an indulgence, a pardon.

…

When did Elster kill his wife? Wouldn’t it have to be before he approaches Scottie, before he goes to Ernie’s with Judy, dressed up as Madeleine? If she’s alive, there is always the possibility that Scottie will see the real Madeleine. If she’s dead, there is no such worry for Elster.

…

It almost seemed as if she had some presentiment of what would happen. She resisted the trip so strongly. Eventually, though, we got on the plane, we took the BART to the hotel, we checked in. She was tired. She went to the room, undressed, and fell asleep on the bed. I walked up to Union Square — we were staying on the edge of the Tenderloin — and then over to the Argonaut and the other nearby locations. As I had thought, it was no good without her there.

…

Earlier in my notes, I had wondered about how Elster could have gotten down and out of the tower unseen. I had wondered how Scottie, stricken by acrophobia such that he could not accompany Madeleine up the tower or move from the step when he saw her go past, could have gotten down. Nowhere did I wonder how Judy could have gotten down, but hers is the most unlikely escape of the three. Judy has been made up and dressed to look like the dead woman just discovered; she cannot be other than dead, must now act out that part, remain confined to the tower, unable to call out or move as though in a grave. If Elster is spotted, he might go unnoticed or unrecognized (no one knows how he is dressed, only Scottie knows what he looks like), invent some excuse or give a believable reason for his presence (“My answering service rang to tell me the police were looking for me”) but if Judy is spotted, all is lost. There can be no such coincidence or explanation for Judy, no blind spot in the crowd below — she looks like the dead woman and is costumed as her, and both of those facts are immediately apparent and infinitely suspicious. Though I want to liberate Judy from Scottie’s stranglehold, the only way to make sense out of her escape from the tower is to once again give the narrative over to him: he has never left the tower. He sits on the steps or clings to the gutter, terrified of falling, dreaming of Judy on the street, Judy in her room, Judy in his arms, Judy in the tower.

…

E. T. A. Hoffmann’s story “The Sandman” is about a young man named Nathanael who is in love with Klara, the sister of his best friend Lothar. Nathanael leaves Klara to go to school in another town, where he is accosted by an eyeglass salesman who bears an uncanny resemblance to a man who Nathanael feels was responsible for his father’s death. Thus distracted, he buys a telescope from the salesman to get rid of him. Looking through the telescope, he sees into his neighbor’s rooms, where a beautiful girl sits alone at a table, night after night. Nathanael becomes fascinated by this girl, named Olympia and said to be the neighbor’s daughter, even falls in love with her after attending her piano recital and then dancing with her all night long. Perhaps it is the suddenness (and the thoroughness) of Nathanael’s change in affections, but something about the story makes me think there must be some resemblance between Klara and Olympia: Though we learn about Klara — even hear from her, via her letter to Nathanael — before we learn about Olympia, Olympia’s introduction comes soon after the beginning of the tale, and she immediately eclipses Klara. One substitutes for the other, both in the story and in Nathanael’s affections.

Noting the young man’s obvious interest in his daughter, Olympia’s father, a professor, invites Nathanael to come over and spend time with Olympia whenever he likes. Nathanael passes hours on end with Olympia, reading poems to her and telling her his thoughts and feelings, and all the while Olympia simply stares into his eyes and sighs. She is perfectly attentive and quiet, just what Nathanael has apparently always wanted (Klara, in her letter and in Nathanael’s memory, has been for him the shrill voice of reason, calling his fear of the eyeglass salesman a fantasy and denigrating his poetry as silly), never saying a word except when Nathanael finally takes his leave, whereupon she says, “Goodnight, my dearest.” But it turns out that Olympia’s perfect attentiveness is the result of the limits of her mechanism, for she is not human at all but an automaton created by her “father,” the professor. Nathanael discovers this when the eyeglass salesman quarrels with the professor and takes the lifeless (and, in an odd detail, eyeless) Olympia away with him, slung over his shoulder. Nathanael is driven mad by the revelation that he has so exhausted his affections on an automaton, a thing, a mere conception. He was in love with Olympia, but Olympia was not real. What does that make him? He attacks the professor, screaming, “Whirl round, circle of fire! Merrily, merrily! Aha, lovely wooden doll, whirl round!” He nearly strangles the man, but is apprehended at the last moment and taken away to a sanitarium.

When he has recovered, he is sent back home, where he finds Klara is still in love with him, and, through her constancy, he rediscovers his own love for her. The two make plans to marry. But, on the point of leaving for their new home, they decide to climb the town hall’s tower one last time, to “look at the distant mountains.” Once at the top of the tower, Nathanael pulls out the telescope he bought from the eyeglass salesman and accidentally looks at Klara (standing beside him) through it, recalling memories of Olympia and driving him mad once more. He grabs Klara, and, screaming “Whirl wooden doll! Whirl wooden doll!” he tries to throw her from the tower. Her brother, who has remained on the ground, hears all of this and rushes up the stairs. He saves Klara, but Nathanael, believing he sees the eyeglass salesman in the crowd below, throws himself from the tower before he can be restrained.

At the very least, the conclusion of “The Sandman” calls to mind Hitchcock’s Vertigo . There is the mysterious climbing of the tower, the man driven mad by the vision of a woman (who is not what she seems), the other man climbing to the top to save her. But even before that there is the sanitarium, the woman as mirage or projection, the madness of the man when confronted by the rational woman, the fixation of the protagonist. Nathanael watches out of his window as the eyeglass salesman, who he believes to be the Sandman, a creature that plucks out the eyes of children who won’t fall asleep at bedtime, descends the stairs with the woman (not, as it turns out, a real woman) he loves, and is driven mad by the sight of it. Scottie watches out of the window of the tower as Madeleine (not, as it turns out, a real woman) apparently throws herself to the roof below, and is driven mad by the sight of it.