recognition
are YOU certain that’s me? Madeleine asks, examining die photograph: an unsmiling child punishing a naked man. The photographer coats a glass plate with collodion; he nods, abstractedly. When you disappear behind the camera, I tell my eyes: look forgiving. I tell my mouth: appear noble. Where does she go, the person who is forgiving and noble and tender? Adrien, feeding the plate into the dark maw of his box, says, I’m simply taking your picture. The me in this photograph is not me, the girl insists. She is Madeleine’s ghost, pinned here to the paper. Adrien lurches dangerously, his equipment sways: Are you ready? But his subject is not satisfied: Who is that person in the picture? One, two, three, Adrien counts. Is there another child out there, sulky and cruel, whom you have accidentally captured in your photograph? And is her name Madeleine?
at the edge of the drive
a long drive curves through the estate; it is covered with gravel, When the gypsies first arrived, the wheels of their caravans made a great crunching sound. But the drive has been silent for some time now; it seems that no one comes and no one leaves; no visitors, no deliveries; nothing interrupts the dream-tedium of days folding in upon themselves, as contortionists do, here on the estate of the widow. Madeleine rakes the gravel into the dustpan of her hands. By tying her spare drawers at the knees, she has turned them into a sack. As she trudges across the lawn, lugging her drawers behind | her, Charlotte sticks her head out from a caravan and says, That \ looks terribly heavy. It is! Madeleine replies. She makes several trips. She remains mysterious. But she cannot resist, in the midst of her labors, observing to Charlotte: I like to sleep when it’s raining outside.
atop a caravan
the stars and moon do not seem any doset, but the ground looks much farther away, and the roofs of caravans more precarious than expected. Madeleine teeters above the world like a small, drunken seraph. Everyone but she is sleeping. From below, she hears a moan, a low and plaintive sound rising up through the rooftop, through the soles of her bare feet M. Pujol is moaning in his sleep, and when she hears this, the sound of loss, Madeleine thrusts her hands deep into her drawers, which she has dragged, with some difficulty, up to these heights. A fistful of gravel rains down on the caravan. The moaning ceases, abrupdy. It is just as she predicted! In the darkness, Madeleine glows. And though to her ears the noise is not of raindrops, but simply of gravel ratding across a tin roof, she knows that from below, from the tousled, sheet-tangled bed, the flatulent man hears the sound of rain, and is quieted. Go to sleep, M. Pujol! she whispers. Again she digs into her sack.
help
between cloudbursts, Madeleine hears the wobble of wheek I being rolled across the lawn. She peers down into the dark, indignantly: Who else is awake? It is the photographer, who stumbles about during the night as he does during the day, like a somnambulist. He looks up at her and staggers forward, pulling behind him the wagon that holds his photographic equipment. Either he is very tired, or else the load is very heavy. You should be in bed! Madeleine hisses. It’s too late to be taking pictures! The photographer shuffles on, without heeding her, his forehead gleaming dimly. When he reaches the foot of the caravan, and Madeleine leans over the edge of the roof to shoo him away, she sees that the wagon has been emptied of its canisters, bellows, and bulbs. She sees that the wagon has been filled, instead, with gravel. He has come to help. This was my idea! hisses Madeleine, from the rooftop.
on the carpet
LOUDER, SAYS THE WIDOW, cupping her hand around her ear.
recognition
But already he has leapt up, swung through the air, attached himself like a wayward trapezist to the tin roof of the caravan. He dangles there, looking glumly up at Madeleine, and she sees that his face is innocent, as if his every gesture, every act, has been performed without his knowledge. Madeleine steps on his fingers, so she can feel how they tremble from the effort of clutching onto the roof. If only she were heavier. If only he would fall. Ow, Adrien says. Her cold toes cud around his knuckles. Don’t, he says. Her toenails press into the backs of his hands. This hurts, he says. And, in saying so, nearly upsets her gravity. Oh yes: this hurts. That which has remained unknown to Madeleine now makes its sudden and forceful acquaintance. It is the sight of dumb, suffering Adrien, it is his small cry, that awakes her.
fall
down she plummets, her drawers sailing out behind her like the skirts of a disaffected angel, or the tail of a plunging kite.
cursed
ADRIEN TAKES this opportunity to heave himself onto the roof. From the damp ground below, Madeleine scowls at him, thinks up curses. May your every picture be pornographic! May your glass plates shatter! May you ruin every single thing you touch. Her curses are bitter, not only because he is up on the caravan, and she down on the grass, but also because what was once faint and without name — no more than a shudder, a flush, a short spell of light-headedness, an intestinal fluttering — feels now like a wound. Without knowing it, he has told Madeleine her own secret. That she loves the flatulent man; that she aches for him.
declaration
i love you, Mother says, in an experimental mood. The sleeping girl says nothing in return. Mother puts down her spoon, mbs her hands on her apron, and goes to stand alongside the bed. With a brisk, unthinking movement, she straightens die coverlet so that all is smooth. She tries again. I love you, Mother says. Very much. And the girl, who has been known to sigh enormously, and moan, and even to let loose a ripping snore, makes no sound at all. She is as pale and unresponsive as a lump of dough. Do you remember, Mother asks, how I used to brush your hair? You would make a rumbling sound in the bottom of your throat, just like a litde cat. In the evening, when I sat down with the sewing, you would kneel at my feet and push your head in my lap, seeking out my hands, wanting again the feel of me moving the brush against your scalp. And never once did I not put my needle down and touch you. For it was a pleasure to me, to hear that sound you would make…. In her bed, the girl remains silent, and unmoved. Do you remember, Mother asks, the story I used to tell you? About the donkey, and the princess, and how she found the golden key…. But Mother finds she can no longer recall the details exactly, nor the ending, nor the plot. Well, there was a story, she says, and what matters is that you liked it, and that I told it to you. I told it to you countless times, for you could not be satisfied, and would refuse to hear another story, or to hear the story told by any other voice but mine. So I told it, again and again, long after I had grown sick of it, because you wanted to hear my voice, repeating the words that pleased you, Do you remember that? Do you remember my voice? And, leaning very close to the pillow, so close that she can feel the moistness of her daughter’s breath, she says, again, I love you. The sleeping girl does not so much as shudder. Ach, Madeleine! Mother cries in despair, turning away from the bed. You were always stubborn!
mutiny
smack! is the sound of the girl’s hand Ming squarely upon die backside of M. Pujol. Smack! is the sound of her palm meeting the flesh of his bared cheeks. Tonight, though, the widow hears nothing. No sound at alL She leans forward, frowning, in her delicate chair. She cups a hand around her ear. As M. Pujol twists his head over his left shoulder, Adrien steps out from beneath his shroud, and Charlotte lifts her fingers from her strings. They all look at Madeleine, who is wincing and wagging her hand, as if from the sting of a very sharp blow. At last she declares: The widow has gone completely deaf! The performers stare at her effrontery. Hasn’t the widow just complained of M. Pujol’s sighs, and punished the servants for singing in the kitchen? I am not in the least deaf, the widow says. All but Madeleine nod slowly in agreement. Leaning back in her chair, the widow says, Why not try again. But Madeleine’s paddles are now fists, and her arms hang stiff at her sides like two furious exclamation marks. No, she says. She is obstinacy itself.