audience
what AN acute pleasure it is, to be reunited with one’s things. To see one’s children sitting straight in their chairs, hair combed, and hands folded in their laps. What a pleasure it is, to nod to one’s neighbors, find a spot near the aisle, and adjust oneself in the seat; to enjoy the dimming of lights, ushers disappearing, programs rustling, an old gentleman coughing, and the breathless heavenly feeling that yes, yes, it is all about to begin….
ahem
MADELEINE SPREADS HER ARMS. Ladies and Gentlemen, it is with great pleasure that I introduce the phenomenal M. Pujol. Though known to me as a kind and modest man, tonight he will be presented to you in splendor, as the toast of Paris, as the darling of Algiers, as all the rage in Antwerp and Ghent — simply put, as Le Petomane. But before we begin tonight’s performance, I would be remiss if I did not warn you of certain medical hazards. Upon witnessing his amazing gifts you will, I promise, feel the unmistakable desire to laugh. You might also experience the following urges: to scream, to cry, to grip your neighbor’s knee, to beat your head upon the floor, to tear your clothing into pieces and go rolling through the aisles. Do not, at any cost, resist these urges. To do so would be to jeopardize your nervous systems. I say this with a full understanding of his powers. Those who have suppressed their natural responses, who have attempted | to maintain a modicum of dignity, have suffered the terrible consequences. Cases of apoplexy, suffocation, paralysis, and amnesia have been widely reported at the scenes of his performances. For these reasons I ask you to take a small precaution: You must open your hearts to him, ladies and gentlemen, or risk the utter destruction of your health. It is that simple, and that serious. But you have waited long enough. I can see you leaning forward in your seats. With no further ado, I introduce to you my great friend, my guide, my heart’s delight… Le Petomane!
star
and so the curtain is lifted. On stage: a large basin of water; a candlestick sitting atop a stool; a length of tubing; and a tarnished litde flute with six stops, in order that he may play ‘Au dair de la lune.’ Everything is ready for him, but the sad and pale-faced man has not appeared. From behind her, Madeleine hears the sound of her stage manager grunting. There is a fluttering of wings, and then a man comes stumbling out into the lights, as if propelled against his will by a much greater force. He has been stripped of his smock, as Madeleine instructed, and stuffed into a black evening coat, one pilfered from the mayor especially for the occasion. It appears, at one shoulder, that he has already burst a seam. And it appears that Mme. Cochon has tried to smooth the cowlicks in his hair, for the signs of her struggle are everywhere, tiny bits of down clinging to his lapels, as though he has come freshly from wringing the neck of a goose. Yet in his heavy fist he dutches not a bird, but a filthy string, which trails behind him, weighted down by the battered kite at its end. Faded now after months in the sun and the wind, the kite still carries a picture of his cranium. As for his face, it wears the dismayed expression of someone who finds himself in the wrong production. He looks back over his shoulder beseechingly, as if Mme. Cochon might whisper his lines, or a tremendous piece of scenery might roll out and flatten him beneath its wheels. How did I end up here? his whole body asks twitching in the footlights, longing to disappear. Upon seeing Madeleine, however, he seems to remember what it is that he is supposed to do. His eyes brighten; he steps forward with courage; he drops the kite string and — like that — it falls away from him, his clumsiness and coarseness and bewilderment, it all falls away. Like that, his purpose is revealed. He must unbutton his breeches. He must guide the little girl by her hand. He must wrap her little fingers around his cock. But doing so, his eyes fill with tears. Great drops of water spill down the half-wit’s cheeks. Taking the hands of the girl in his own, he weeps over them.
gift
what happened to your hands? The question gathers at the back of the barn and sweeps forward in a bitter gust of curiosity. Murmuring, and clucking, and craning their necks, the audience asks what the idiot does not have the strength of mind to say. I am not tonight’s attraction! the gjurl protests, though looking down at her hands, she sees that her two great mitts have at last completed their return. What happened? surges up once more from the audience. She is suddenly glad that the half-wit is there to keep her from falling. Not wanting to look again at her hands, she turns boldly to the audience: It’s nothing! she cries. And peering out at them, she discerns their faces: jealous Sophie, who now wears her hair piled atop her head; the bald-pated chemist, who used to slip her sweets behind his counter, the bashful mayor, his youngest daughter perched neady on his lap; and Mother, Father, her brothers and sisters, among them the foolhardy Mimi, whom Mother is barely restraining from running forward to the stage. Mysteriously, these faces she remembers as so particular are now almost indistinguishable to her, every one of them stricken, every one of them wearing an identical look: of guilt, and most especially of pity. She cannot bear to be the object of this look. But they have made me special! she insists. They have taken me to places I would never otherwise have been. And displaying her mangled hands for all to see, she repeats a phrase borrowed from M. Pujoclass="underline" An abnormality, to be sure but consider it, as should you, a gift! The audience remains unconvinced.
act
look, she says, I can tuck my feet behind my ears, and waddle about on my hands. But when she demonstrates, the spectators simply shake their heads and sigh. Listen, she says, disentangling herself, 1 can make a sound louder than a thunderclap! But when she slams her mitts together, only the idiot jumps in surprise; the barn fills with the rustle of people shifting in their seats. This I know you will like, she tries again. I can start the bullfrogs singing. And blowing into the horn of her hands, she makes a deep, sad, bellowing sound, the lowest note in M. Pujol’s scale, and soon enough, rising up in all directions, comes the distant chorus of frogs, jowls swelling with song, their voices carrying from all the wet corners of the world: the riverbank, the millpond, the water hole behind the barn, the empty pool where a widow once kept her fish. The audience finds this stirring performance merely cause for greater pity. Madeleine hears the sound of sniffling, and is enraged. Among the rich, she shouts, my gifts are in great demand!
encore
the half-wit has already unbuttoned his breeches. So it is with little difficulty that she arranges him: he must arch his back; he must let his head drop between his arms; he must appear more dog-like. In exasperation, Madeleine presses her hand into the small of M. Jouy’s back: Like so! There once was a widow, she shouts at the barn, who so favored my talents, she would say of them only, Louder! And, smack! is the sound of a girl’s hand falling squarely upon the backside of an idiot. Smack! is the sound of her palm meeting the flesh of his bared cheeks. She lived in a very grand house, Madeleine cries. She had Persian carpets in every room. But nothing gave her greater pleasure than the sight of my two hands! And once again she displays them proudly, as if they are a hundred times more rare than anything this barn has ever seen. In truth, Madeleine is sorry to have them back in her possession. She is sorry never to have stroked the hair on M. Pujol’s neck, and she would have liked to touch the pulsing hearts of her neighbors; in truth, the short life of her ten perfect fingers is causing her own heart to wither, and it is all she can do to keep from weeping, stupidly as the half-wit — but she would rather die than show regret, so she brings her paddle down more swiftly on the idiot. There once was a man, she declares, who had suffered so much, he found relief, he found solace, in the touch of these hands. But the person whom she is paddling now does not shiver and moan as M. Pujol once did. Instead he is making a snuffling noise; he is choking, it seems, on the spill of his tears. If only you knew Le Petomane, she tells the audience. If only he were here.