"Ma'am! Ma'am! Is there anyone up front?"
Was she from some far corner of the world, or even another altogether? She spoke no language that Dorsay knew. And yet she didn't lack common sense. As he was gesturing wildly at the empty cage, she urged him, with a single, briskly eloquent movement of her chin, to pay no heed and enter the first room of the exhibition.
Kids' outfits of all ages, swaddling clothes, diapers, and onesies, all kinds of woolens, bibs, pajamas, and bodysuits, variously frayed, worn, and unraveling-these were what the first display cases Dorsay bent over featured. The frames of theses cases were of the finest oak, and outfitted with thick glass and heavy locks, as though they held jewels or manuscripts of incredible value. Moving along, Dorsay found even more display cases. In these, with a piety worthy of a collection of Noah's fishing hooks or Xenon's arrowheads, were bits and pieces of toys in a neat row. The axles of tiny cars, torsos of pilots exiled from their cockpits, gas-station signs, railroad-crossing gates, canoes with garish redskins, surviving pawns from the shipwreck of a board game, corsairs with gaping holes midhull, nurses eternally well-behaved in their unmussable skirts, the heads of high-wire electricians, battleships on casters, spavined sawhorses… Dorsay understood perfectly that he was fainting. In fact, a mist seemed to be descending from the coffered ceiling, but the sight of this didn't fool him. He congratulated himself on losing consciousness in utter lucidity: he'd recognized the toys, and had decided to faint. For the sake of form, he tried to hang onto the top of the display case. He managed only to slow his fall a bit, or perhaps stage it better, like children who practice their dying fall artistically before the wardrobe mirror.
He was lying on a sofa, and his head was in a woman's lap. She was stroking his forehead, brushing his hair back with two gentle fingers. She was sitting too far back for him to see her face.
"What happened?"
He knew quite well, but he wanted to hear the stranger's voice. Besides, she wasn't a total stranger to him: he recognized her perfume, was sure of having smelled it once before in a woman's arms… But which one? Hostia, perhaps? It had been so long, my God, so long!
"You fainted. The watchmen brought you here."
The voice was deep and beautiful. He didn't like twittery voices. 0 Verlaine! "And her voice, distant, calm, and deep…" He felt relieved; the voice that had responded wasn't Hostia's. Hostia had a rather deep voice, too, but less husky, more velvety.
"Who are you?"
"I'm the director of the museum."
"And where am l?"
"You're in my office."
"But this museum-"
"Shh, don't get excited. Relax. Isn't it nice here, just like this?"
The gentle fingers slipped from his forehead to his right temple and began lightly massaging it. Dorsay was torn between the anxious curiosity this place inspired in him, and a languor close to the utter relaxation of a well-fed infant or a sated lover. The woman's voice, her perfume, the warmth of her thighs beneath his neck, her calming caresses, produced a hypnotic effect on him. He felt like he was about to go under again, but voluptuously this time, as one might under soft eiderdown. And yet the incongruity of his situation provoked a flash of pride.
"Ms. Director, what do you think…"
The woman smiled. He knew without seeing her that she was smiling, and when she spoke again, the almost tender irony of her voice proved him right.
"Let yourself go," she said. "Forget everything. Here, with your head in my lap, you're right where you belong at last, and I fully in my role-"
"No! 11
He wasn't sure what rebellion of his entire being lifted him from where he lay. But just as he was about to turn toward the director and order her to explain this so-called museum, this building's true purpose and the role she'd boasted of playing with regard to him, his strength deserted him. He fell to a crouch at the foot of the sofa, out of breath, about to be sick.
"Really, you're impossible!" She rose in turn. He heard the sound of her heels on the parquet floor. "I'm going to call an ambulance. They'll take you to the hospital, if that's what you want."
The voice was curt now. It no longer held the complicit inflections he thought he'd heard earlier, even when she was mocking him.
"No-no, not the hospital;' he stammered in a strangled whisper.
She stopped, picked up a telephone, and dialed a number. "Hello? Emergency? This is the museum. One of our visitors has just had a little fainting spell."
"Don't!"
The voice continued, implacable. "How long? All right, I'll notify the watchmen; they'll keep an eye out for the ambulance."
She hung up.
"You're… mean!"
Could she even hear him? With great strides, she crossed the room again, and passed near him without stopping, in a whiff of perfume. Her indistinct figure disappeared through a tall padded door.