Read Online Madeleine Is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum - Free Book Online

himself in the wrong production. He looks back over his shoulder beseechingly, as if a stagehand 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 candlelight, longing to do away with itself.
    The flatulent man makes a small, exasperated noise. His arms drop to his sides.
    Upstaged, once again, by an amateur. His triumphant return, foiled!

Reveal
    NO; HE IS HAVING DIFFICULTY with his butterfly tie.
    And suddenly Adrien seems to remember what it is that he is supposed to do. His eyes brighten; he steps forward with courage; he lifts his arm and—like that—it falls away from him, his clumsiness and coarseness and bewilderment, it all falls away, like the sleeve of a dressing gown as a young woman raises her hand to brush her hair, exposing the whiteness of her forearm, her elbow—like that, his purpose is revealed, that beautifully. He must fix the flatulent man's tie. And his face no longer resembles that of the sleepwalker, or the opium eater; his face is that of a man who must tilt M. Pujol's chin, with all the tenderness in the world, and arrange the wing-like folds of his white evening tie.

Metamorphosis
    SHE LETS THE CURTAIN FALL . She stands there in the darkness, panting.
    Memory will not adjust to this: the pulse, the stirring, of new organs. Her desire draws out its feelers, and unfolds its sticky wings.

Transfixed
    NEVER—NOT WHEN the prince kissed the princess, nor the priest laid the host upon one's tongue, not when Madeleine gripped the despondent member of M. Jouy, nor when Papa held Maman in the dark, not the brothers and sisters pressing their small, hot hands against the sleeping girl—has a person touched another with such tender concentration.
    And in his touch there is not the kindness, the abnegation, of the abbot tending to the wounded Michel: here, there are no ministrations, no saints; no blazing suns, no attendant moons. There is only this perfect reciprocity—two stars in orbit, two flowers unfolding—an exchange of pleasure unlike that she has ever seen.
    She watches how his fingers float over the crooked tie, the pale throat, the apple bumping along its narrow path, and it is as if this gesture has never before existed, has only now been invented by dint of his hunger. He must teach his hands, his fingers, to do that which is utterly strange to them. And to defy habit in this way—what force is great enough? How shabby, how halfhearted, her own mutiny now seems. So what force? Madeleine does not know. She knows only that the sight of it could impale her. That she could part the curtains and watch, swooning, as the gesture is performed again and again.

Overture
    AND SO THE CURTAIN is lifted.
    As she looks once more on the scene inside, she thinks of a violinist tucking his instrument beneath his chin.
    Behold: M. Pujol is pressing his cheek upon the photographer's hand. The hand is resting, like a violin, against his collarbone. He does not rub his cheek against the hand, as though it were the rabbit trimming on a coat, nor does he dig his chin into the flesh, like a half-wit who wants nothing more than to sink his face into the warmth of his own shoulder. He simply holds the hand against him, and in his touch is the impatience with which musicians handle their instruments.
    He closes his eyes. He takes a breath.
    It is all about to begin.

Interrupted
    THEN, IN HER EMOTION , in her extreme but vague excitement, it happens—Madeleine makes a wheezing sound. If there is a nestling in her hands, she will fondle it to death. If there is a reflection in a pool, she will peer too closely, lose her balance, splash through it with her boots. Her rough hands, her muddy boots, and the wings thrashing savagely inside her, sending up this wheeze, this strange whistling sound.
    The hand retreats. The two men step away from each other. They look about them