scherzo
perhaps it is those unwieldy arms that make the gypsies love her so. They pluck her from the crowd as if she were the roundest and ripest fruit, and the eleven other girls squirm with envy. A. disappearing trickl Sister Clavel wrings her hands; outings make her perspire and she is happy only when her charges are praying or asleep. Madeleine smiles at them from the center of the ring as the gypsy mama unspools, from one of her several and cavernous pockets, an endless piece of string. Displaying it for all the crowd to see, she secures the greasy end between Madeleine’s fists and cirdes around her with the swiftness of a spider until Madeleine looks like a well-wrapped fly. Can she breathe? Sister Clavel worries, while Bernadette steels herself, preparing to make the rescue. The little package is raised aloft by the gypsy mama, and then tossed, with a series of shouts, from one epicene acrobat to another. Firecrackers hiss and the sickly, frail animals begin to fret inside their cages. The audience stomp their feet like tribesmen, join in the chanting of the gypsy words, and suddenly, from out of die cacophony, there rises a wounded wail; the midgets scurry, brushing aside a velvet curtain, behind which sits a beautiful woman, who saws upon her own taudy stretched hairs with the energy of the devil. Her costly dress gapes open, her fingers jig up and down her elegant neck, and her bow bobs back and forth across her belly. The faster she plays, the more her face glows: she is self-illuminating, ecstatic, and her strange, discolored song makes the gypsies dance with the desperation of a bear on a chain. They gravitate towards her, yelping, and Madeleine comes flying with them, shuttling over their heads as they reel in tightening circles around the stringed beauty, whose bow moves so quickly it blurs. She scrapes harder, faster, more frantically, her knees atremble, and then: the bow clatters to the ground, the strings jangle, and the player gasps. The spell is cast. Cuddling it in her arms, the gypsy mama returns the ball of string to center stage. A hush falls over the tent. Is the little girl propped on her head or on her feet? By now it is impossible to tell. Shhhhhhhhhhhhh! the mama commands. See and be amazed! After a peremptory wiggle of her fingers, she grabs the frayed end of string and yanks it.
evanescent
0FF the bundle goes, spinning like a top. It leaves a trail of string in its wake, tracing a desultory pattern across the floor.’ When it skitters out to the edges of the ring, Bernadette swoops down and opens her arms, but as soon as she can feel its whir, away it goes in the opposite direction, obeying a gravity of its own. Its progress is dizzying; heaps of string litter the stage. The bulge unravels into a ghost of its former self, until all that is left is a latticework of twine, suspended, still quivering, in midair. Madeleine has vanished.
visitor
mother is startled by a thunderous thump, and Madeleine moans in her sleep. Looking up from her cauldron, she sees Papa, cheek Battened against the warm Bank of a cow, arm extended and pointing placidly at their roof. Matilde has alighted there, and left droppings beside their chimney. Mother bustles outside and gestures at Matilde with her spoon: Not today, Madame, please! Madeleine is sleeping. The wings of the fat woman swelclass="underline" I am conducting a scientific experiment. I should not be long. She stoops down and sniffs her droppings. Roses! she announces. It smells like roses! How wicked! Mother gasps and seeks shelter inside, her head protruding from the door so that she can remind Matilde: Only the saints’ bones should smell like roses. You must have made a mistake
impostor
MADELEINE is awoken by the reek of roses, and-when she opens her eyes, she sees the gypsy mama, swabbing off her dusky complexion with a handkerchief soaked in rosewater. Beneath, her sk’«n is tuber pale and porous. So you are not a real gypsy? Madeleine asks, extracting herself from the depths of a flabby divan. Heavens no! the woman exclaims. I was only acting. Then please take me back to Sister Clavel, Madeleine says with decision. The woman laughs, and her voice pirouettes in the air like one of her willowy acrobats: You may call me Marguerite, she says. And then she resumes at the mirror.
alchemy
it is no mistake. Matilde has made a survey of her own droppings, keeping assiduous record of her mood, the direction of the wind, the sun’s position in the sky. Since she has taken flight, she is most often seen scratching away in the leatherbound diary she keeps stashed between her breasts: leaning up against someone’s chimney, or resting in the crotch of a pear tree, her stubby legs dangling cheerfully. In the left-hand column, the data: a loaf of bread and half a pot of preserves; buttermilk; leg of lamb with mint sauce; beer; feeling melancholy; a moderate breeze from the southeast; sun barely past the church spire. In the right-hand column, the results, which are inexorably the same: chalky color, pasty to the touch, and redolent with roses. The scientific spirit has infected Matilde; like her, these droppings are the product of inexplicable change. Atop the village’s roofs, which now serve as her laboratory, she hitches up her skirts and relieves herself. She contemplates the evidence and is puzzled by the enormity of the transformation — the seedy strawberries, the marbled side of ham, the bumpy rind on a wheel of Camembert— all reduced, distilled, made uniform: nothing is left of them except this puddle of excrement, white as an eggshell, and fragrant as June. Jean-Luc, who has been waiting for her visit, climbs over Claude and slides out of the bed. Before Mother can catch him, he has rushed out of the house and hoisted himself onto the trellis. He trembles on the highest rung, but only his forehead rises over the edge of the thatching. Pardon me! he cries. Matilde leans over the edge to see him better. Her bulk casts a shadow over Jean-Luc’s upturned face. My kites got tangled, he says, and jerks his head towards the pasture, where a fragile forest of kites has knotted itself into a skein. They flap fretfully against the sky. Will you please untangle them? he asks. Matilde squints at him. She recognizes his froggy voice, remembers that he could throw far and accurately. She suddenly misses her slow and suety processions. Astride a rooftop, above the hubbub of those bound by gravity, she longs for the market days when she paraded down the street. Very well, she agrees and struggles to her feet, her wings thrashing the air. Jean-Luc loses his balance and tumbles down into Mother’s gesticulating arms.