harbinger
THERE WAS another young man once, his father an ambassador to a country M. Pujol had never heard of. He had come backstage bearing an armful of orchids, of cattleyas, and M. Pujol had shrunk in embarrassment: as though I were an opera dancer! But the young man presented them with his eyes lowered, saying nothing; and M. Pujol felt that to be insulted long would be impossible. Together they spoke little, and not often of love. Which is perhaps why, when remembering that year, M. Pujol will say of it only, My happiness then cannot be described. He means it literally, but how theatrical it sounds! To hear himself say it, even silently (for no one has asked), makes him prickle with shame. He takes refuge in these facts: the carriage we rode in was green; he had a scar, from an appendix operation, of which he was proud; he attended sixteen of my performances and his enthusiasm did not wane; his name was Hugh. The year had ended suddenly, with the announcement of his engagement to a young lady with two houses in Neuilly, near the Bois de Boulogne. At the time M. Pujol had found it painful to accept the news, but looking back he sees that it was simply the portent of what was to come. So that when, many months later, he would once again lose what he loved most to an ordinary woman— La Femme-Petomane! — the shock would not be too great for him.
signs
but the photographer is unlikely to marry a woman with houses. He seems to have few prospects at all, of any kind. He lacks coordination; he tries to but cannot grow a moustache; his pictures are of an uneven quality. “When he speaks, he has trouble looking one in the eye. But his hand had not trembled. What a surprise that had been: a most touching surprise. The whole world is bent on surprising M. Pujol. There is a conspiracy afoot, it seems, a conspiracy to gratify him. From the far field comes a cracking, a whistling, and after that, silence; the handsaw is now abandoned in the grass, the task completed, and as if startled by the cessation of that gnawing sound, the crow shakes its wings and takes to the air, and as if released, at last, by the little spring with which the crow leaves its perch, the branch shudders, the leaves quiver, and a sickly yellow specimen comes spinning down from the sky. The flatulent man looks about him in astonishment. Could the universe be capable of such kindness? Clambering atop his travelling case, he clears his throat; he prepares a greeting; he wonders if to wave his arms would throw off his balance. He will cry out, Adrien! and the young man will turn around and look at him. But oh, surprise: the stern Impossible! The photographer is no longer there. The crown of his head does not float above the privet hedge, nor do his pale frantic fingers. Nothing of him remains visible; he has sunk beneath the privet hedge like a ship, or M. Pujol, stranded on his travelling case, is left to search the ^ horizon and wonder. He was just here, he protests. How could I have lost him?
substitute
if you were M. Pujol, Madeleine says, I would reach out my hand to you. Like this. If you were M. Pujol, Adrien says, 1 would press my mouth against your pulse, like this. If you were he, she says, I would cup your dun in my fingers. If you were he, he says, I would take those fingers into my mouth. Then my mouth would envy my fingers, she says. Then your mouth must usurp your fingers, he says. And then, she says, I would do this.
hunter
from her window, high above the world, the widow spots them the child and her photographer, entangled in the shadows of the shrubbery. And as she watches them, she feels the briefest flicker, like the singe of a match tip’s flame: quickly, now, before it’s gone! She tugs upon the bell rope that dangles beside her: a photograph must be taken; the moment must not be lost. Yes, here is the hind of her nighttime hunts; she has tracked it down at last. Then she laughs at herself, at the futility of her agitated summons. For how can he take the picture, when he is the picture? All of her efforts, if she is to be truthful, are marked by this same sense of impossibility. The more furiously she pursues, the more surely it recedes, this fugitive scene, visible only when glimpsed askance, out of the corner of her rheumy eye. Her latest project has been a failure; she had hoped that this marvelous invention, this alchemy of chemicals and light, would assist her in her pursuits, but now, as her eyes graze over the photographs, she discovers that they offer her nothing. And if they do, it is only by accident: in one picture, the fringe of the carpet is caught between the man’s toes; in another, the child’s mouth is open, as if she is about to speak: these are the details that prick her. But they are scarce among this series of tableaux, lovingly arranged, though ultimately of no poignance or excitement to her. Once she had been interviewed by a scientist, who was anxious to include a grandmother in his study of libertines, already several volumes long. He had amused her with the exacting nature of his questions, and his demands that she should include even the most scabrous details in her accounts. She had teased him, she couldn’t help it, so strenuous were his attempts to manage her perversions, to render them immobile. What you must finally recognize, she said, what you must understand about my predilections (the scientist leans forward: at long last, the secret!) is that my desire does not take; it turns, as milk does. For that reason, she feels only a litde sad when she finds, slipped beneath her door, a note written in an elegant hand: Please forgive me. I have left in search of a Faculty of Medicine who might take interest in my unusual condition. I plan to donate my body to Science, so that I can say my life has been of some use to Humankind.
insane
but the child and her photographer are inconsolable. They cleave to each other as orphans do; they seek comfort in the photographs’ melancholy caress. Adrien has laid out all his pictures on the grass. This image, he tells Madeleine, is literally an emanation of M. Pujoclass="underline" from his body radiates light, which then inscribes itself on the very surface which in turn your gaze now touches. They find solace only in the certainty that his body still touches them through the medium of light. But it is a solace that, the photographer knows, will lead slowly and inexorably to madness. The pictures before them serve not only as agonizing reminder of his absence but irrefutable proof that he did in fact exist for them, that his skin did burn upon the man’s fingertips, that his flesh did shrink from the girl’s stinging touch. This proof is what they cannot bear. He was indeed here, the photographs whisper. But he is no longer. A decision is reached, in the name of sanity. The widow finds beneath her door another note, much less elegantly penned. Two more of her assistants have decamped.
charivari
all the world is atremble: the dogs barking, the bells clanging, the fine white scent of orange blossoms everywhere, and Jean-Luc scuttling out the door before Mother can do anything about it. He is off to join the other boys, who are stealing enough copper pots and pans to deafen the whole town, when tonight they go marching through the streets, banging and hallooing till the dawn. It is in this moment of confusion, with every child in motion around her, the girls leaning out the windows, waving, and the boys snatching up her spoons, that Mother looks at Madeleine. How still she is, how quiedy she sleeps. Her breathing barely lifts the covers. She is so beautiful when she sleeps. The children stop. They stare at their mother. They have not heard this said in a very long while. Smooth your sister’s coverlet. Arrange her hair on the pillowcase. And Mother gazes at the girl with a calm affection, as if their silent quarrels were now coming to an end, as if that lush and troublesome body had been restored, by miracle, to its former beauty and perfection. Outside, the church bells cease their clamor. On the stone steps leading down from the chapel, a bride and groom stand blinking stupidly in the sunlight. Why did I never think of it before? Mother wonders.