aroused
after leading the photographer and his assistant to the staff quarters, the matron pauses in the midst of her bustling activity. She passes down a corridor that, to all appearances, is no different from any other. She stops by a door that is no different from all the other doors. Why, then, does she grow damp about the armpits? He is, after all, only an idiot. But the matron, against her better judgment, has come to believe that there is something else, something yearning and human, something trapped inside that lumpy body, struggling to escape. She believes that she sees it in his eyes, the moment when he first awakes, and in his hands, when he defends himself from her washcloth. She felt it, perhaps, when he twisted away from her, and she pursued him, towel steaming; she felt it snuffling against her skirts, burrowing towards the warmth of her red hands. Something fierce and intelligent and alive. The matron reports to the director. M. Jouy is in no condition to leave the hospital. He must remain under our care. The family will have to be informed.
foiled
the chemist reads the letter, and then studies Mother her bosom hefted dangerously atop his delicate display cases, with a litde bit of dread. He takes two steps backwards. Madame, he says, I hate to be the bearer of disappointing news I am not afraid, Mother says. I regret to inform you that your request has been denied, the chemist says: M. Jouy cannot leave the hospital. And the chemist is relieved to note that Mother appears unperturbed. I have asked them politely, is all she says, before turning on J her heels and leading her children in a majestic exit, each child 1 clutching a caramel in one hand and an ingenious tin chicken in the other.
moustache
having finished off her bonbon, Beatrice raises her objections. Madeleine belongs to us, she says. Why must we gjve her away? Because, explains Mother, in good families, such as ours, it’s best that girls of a certain age, and of certain experiences, be married. But there are hundreds of nicer husbands, says Beatrice. What about that man who appeared at our door, the one with the moustache? It is out of my hands, Mother says. Madeleine herself has chosen M. Jouy. In Nature’s eyes, he is already her husband. If that were true, Beatrice thinks, then he would be married to half the girls in our village. Besides, Mother adds, he is agreeable, and undemanding. He will not complain about a wife who is often asleep. Always asleep, says Beatrice. He will not complain. Because how can he? When he himself is— Lacking? Yes, that’s a fair way of putting it. To bring two people together, two incomplete people, is the right thing to do. She was not always lacking, Beatrice thinks. And do not forget, says Mother, what a help M. Jouy will be to have around the house. Remember how we used to pay him, in the springtime, to dean the shed? A son-in-law is what your father needs. One who is strong, with a healthy back, and who can keep him company. Oh yes, says Beatrice, mechanically. It’s the least we can do f Papa. But you stay away from him, Mother warns. Of course, Beatrice murmurs, lashes lowered.
inmate
Madeleine looks for M. Pujol. She is, however, too short. Even hopping up and down, she still cannot see through the small, paned windows at the top of every door, windows through which the director can peer solicitously at the padent residing within. She has worked her way down the corridor, and every window, it turns out, has been constructed at the same impossible height. Madeleine wishes to see the madmen and madwomen who live inside the hospital. She expects that behind each door there exists an amazing affliction: the Tigress, who paces her cell and feasts upon raw livers; the Dromedary Boy, who fancies himself capable of drinking a well dry; the Walrus Woman, who wept so profusely, and at so little provocation, that her eyeteeth grew to the very length and consistency of tusks. A man fluent in eleven languages, yet unable to communicate with anyone. A girl who cannot seem to stop sleeping, who rusdes and stirs but never wakes. The photographer, however, is six and a half inches taller than Madeleine, a height from which he can peer through the windows, only to discover the most ordinary of inmates. To visit this hospital, he thinks, is to visit the catacombs and sewers of Paris; it is to stroll down their broad avenues, admiring the symmetry of their arches. Baron Hausmann has constructed, underground, a city nearly identical to the one above: airy, harmonious, prosaic — a place that invites slow perambulation, the opening of shops, the planning of excursions. Touring through this subterranean city, one is struck by the decorative arrangement of skulls, set into the walls like Portuguese tiles, and the shininess of the piping through which the sewage rushes. And here, in the hospital? The Walrus Woman is suffering from neurasthenia; the Man from Babel is afflicted by dementia praecox; the Tigress, a brain gone spongy from syphilis.
pose
the director attaches, by means of very small clamps, the ends of six narrow wires to the fleshiest parts of a patient’s face. These wires connect the patient to a highly sensitive machine, the newest of its kind, which is too large to appear in the photograph itself. The machine looms darkly in the background; it takes up an entire wall. Three serious men stand before it, adjusting its dials. Or this is the impression that the director hopes to effect. The wires do not, in fact, lead anywhere. They protrude crookedly from the patient’s head, and this, combined with the dullness of his eyes, suggests a mutinous automaton, one who has tugged himself free from the clockwork. While those that are wild-eyed, what they resemble most are gorgons.
recognition
bent over the fire, Mother hatches a plan: small bodies creeping in the night, and then, at the hospital wall, each hoisted upon the shoulders of another. A stairway of children. The very highest step will be Claude; he raps on the window, awakens the slow-witted giant inside. Open the window! the boy urges. I have something for you! A delicious lure, baked by Mother; a series of soft, mournful bird calls; a pony cart rolled out into position; an idiot falling through the darkness. When he lands, the cart wheels nearly break. The grain sacks exhale huge clouds of dust. The horse rears up, and then is quieted. The staircase dismantles itself. The bridegroom is abducted. As Mother devises the retreat, a hand mirror appears before her. Beatrice is holding it; she has captured, again, something resembling a cow. Do not worry, Beatrice says, Madeleine is still sleeping. In the roundness of the mirror, Mother sees her own face captured. She sees how her eyes are shining, and her mouth clenched, in the great effort of bringing something forth, in the disfiguring strain of it. She barely understands the face as her own. But I am not a monster, Mother says.
house of the sleeping beauties
To marry, to rear her children, these things were on the surface good, Mother thinks. But to have had the long years in her power, to have controlled their lives, to have warped their natures even, these might be evil things. Perhaps, beguiled by custom and order, one’s sense of evil goes numb.
alphabet
it is time to begin. This photograph shall be titled, Terror! Terror? Adrien wonders, beneath his black hood. You must make the subject appear terrified! says the director. Fear will be the first entry in our alphabet. How am I to do that? Adrien asks, hidden behind his camera. This is your science, not mine, says the director with respect. I will stand here, out of the way, and quietly watch you at work.