surgery
the composer discovered Senesino in the company of the Duke ofWurtemburg, whose retinue includes twenty ballet dancers, three trained monkeys, a small string orchestra, fifteen castrad, and two surgeons from Bologna. The two treat their operation with the strictest professionalism: they — meld their instruments only on the condition that the young subject has been tried as to the probability of the voice. The boy muffled, the heady reek of ether, the surgeon delicately sweating, and brava! The vas deferens is severed. Nothing now will touch the resonant high C; the vein is dosed down, like a mine. Senesino’s mother, it is rumored, keeps the dainty pair pickled in a tiny clay pot. The boy ages into a fleshy and strangely hairless man.
menses
once dethroned, Marguerite is bitter. A vocal absurdity, she sniffs. He is nothing but a caged nightingale! But the composer remains unmoved. He has made his decision. The dark-hued female alto, fragrant and soiled, is not the voice of a hero. But Senesino! Such purity. Such extraordinary range. Lily-white, crystalline, without stain. The stain, Marguerite grumbles, of my menstrual blood.
adieus
AS she bids her farewells from the stagp, Marguerite curtsies to the gelding. She reprises a couplet that a poet of great celebrity has penned for the occasion:
But let old charmers yield to new;
Happy soil, adieu! adieu!
The audience murmurs at her pretty sportsmanship. They crane to examine the castrato, who is perched in the composer’s private box, shielding his smile with a gloved and demure hand. He whispers in the composers ear, promising, Together we will delight them. The composer, prompted, flatters the castrato, but he is interrupted: My timbre is flawless, yes. But it is the cruelty of my condition that will afford them such unbearable pleasures. Marguerite, suddenly immodest, makes a rude gesture from the stage. She grabs her genitals lovingly. She flicks her hand from beneath her chin. Her wrist snaps in the air with wonderful elasticity.
success
mother is flushed with business. Her preserves fetch an admirable price. Visitors arrive from long distances, grown ravenous and dissatisfied from the stories they have heard. I will not be happy, a dying girl says, if I cannot taste those heavenly preserves. In the city, Mother is told, the rich have made a habit of spreading it on their morning rolls. Mother is always distracted, floured, clotted with fruit meat. She bobs up from her cauldron, dabs her upper lip, and asks the small children: Is Madeleine too hot? They flank the bed and roll up their sleeves as they have seen the midwife do. Small hands press expertly against her throat, her cheeks, her eyelids. Madeleine is snowy beneath their fingertips. But I is she perhaps a little warm right here, by her left temple? We had better feel once more. To be safe.
prince
A handsome man appears at the door, wearing a bristling moustache. He is not craving preserves. He is asking for Madeleine. Claude says, She is sleeping. The handsome man answers, I have come to awaken her. Claude asks, How are you going to do that? I am going to kiss her mouth. Wait a minute. Claude shuts the door.
princess
mother’s fingers twitch as she makes her calculations. Into the tub they bathe in on Saturdays, she stirs enough ingredients for one hundred tarts. Four sacks of flour, a winter’s worth of lard. Begrudgingly, a fistful of salt. Mother kneads the face. Jean-Luc, the legs. Beatrice dimples the torso. And Mimi, the youngest, shapes the two lush arms. Her body grows golden with an egg yolk glaze. Papa’s woolen nightcap goes on last. Suddenly, Mother remembers. She conceals the hands beneath the coverlet
kiss
she is perfect, the handsome man says. Mote perfect than I ever imagined. He turns to Mother and plunges into a gallant bow: May 1? Mother says, proudly, If you would. He shoos the brothers and sisters away from the bed and smoothes back his hair, moving with the grace and determination of a maestro. He is nearly overcome with the warmth and fragrance rising from Madeleine’s body and pauses, suspended over her, savoring the moment. He imagines how he will describe it, sitting by the hearth, to their flock of children. He descends for the kiss. It is loud and ardent. Crouched over, he waits for the blissful response, the two unresisting lips that will succumb and then, hungrily, lunge for more. Crumbs speckle his bristling moustache. Simmering preserves fart in Mothers cauldron. The handsome man waits, stiff as a statue. He discovers that he has developed a cramp in his side.
gift
The handsome man is crestfallen. Mother sends him home a pot of preserves. She refuses his money. It’s a gift, she insists.
stirring
as a reward for their bravery and cunning, Mother gives the small children delicious bits of the princess’s body. They are eaten with enormous appetite. The brothers and sisters, prickling with crumbs, are allowed to tumble, glutted, into Madeleine’s bed. They nuzzle against her and sigh, tucked into the warm pockets of her body. Madeleine stirs in her sleep. She smiles. Mother watches her and wonders, Is she amused by what she dreams?
she dreams
when M. jouy placed his cock in her palm, it looked accusingly despondent and she was ashamed, for other girls had spoken of its liveliness. But when she wrapped her sturdy fingers around its girth, it shuddered in her grip like an infant bird. She had learned to ratde the orchard trees so that the weakest nestlings would tumble down into the cradle of her hands, where she found pleasure in the jerk and quiver of their frantic breaths. The organ of M. Jouy felt wondrously similar. It struggled against her tightening fingers with soft, bird-like heaves, and she was comforted by knowing that if her attentions grew too avid, its violent heartbeat would not disappear. Too often, a bird’s pitiful state would excite in her such an awful tenderness (Oh I love you! I love you! the girl keens to the shivering bird) that she would fondle it to death. Buried in a dung heap, so that the cats cannot sniff out its carious flesh, the bird is wet with tears, its body ravished. M. Jouy, she said. I have felt this before. The sad and stately half-wit could not answer, he was so moved by her expertise. She admired how mummy-like he remained while his cock writhed in her hand, as if life had abandoned his body in its eagerness to seek out her touch.
dandelion
SOPHIE HAD INSTRUCTED her to watch his face crumple, majestic and startling like a damp sheet collapsing from the washline, but despite the girls’ demands — Look, Madeleine, look! — her gize never strayed from her hands, his helpless cock. She wondered at the larger girls who claimed that they were too old, that the game had become dull. She could never outgrow this; she would be drawn back ceaselessly, her curiosity constantly renewed. This she knew: you never tire of decapitating a dandelion and squeezing out its milky entrails. The more the motion is repeated, the more irresistible it becomes. You have no choice but to desecrate a dandelion stalk That is what it is there for. His come smelled of the sweet and musty hay that he slept on. She would kneel down daintily and wipe her hands in the long grass. As she walked home from the secret place, the village dogs would nuzzle her palms, their hot tongues lapping up the fading