Madeleine Is Sleeping Read Online Free PDF

bubbled briefly, then disappeared.

Diagnosis
    INSIDE THE BATHING HUT , the wide-striped curtains flapping wildly, Joseph confessed to his beautiful mother: I think I've got a very bad illness.
    How terrible! she said, and gathered him to her, where he squeezed his eyes shut, listened to the thud of the canvas slapping against the poles, smelled the unfamiliar newness of her bathing costume, and tried to ignore the intractable cold that had settled deep inside him. There is a doctor staying at the hotel, his mother said. We will call on him this afternoon.
    The doctor was delighted by the boy's condition. He pointed to the chamberpot, sitting in the middle of an expensive Persian carpet, and demanded, Do it again!
    Joseph obliged. He allowed the water to enter him, and then he asked it back out again. As it gurgled into the basin, the doctor clapped his hands together in astonishment. Quite fantastic! he cried. His muscular control is extraordinary!
    Joseph's mother accepted the compliment with evident pleasure. But she wanted to be certain: It is not an illness?
    Far from it, he assured. An abnormality, certainly, but I consider it, as should you, an endowment!
    With a waving of his hands, the doctor indicated that the examination was now over, and that Joseph could pull up his shorts and resume a more dignified position.
    The muscles can be strengthened, the doctor said, but that will require careful training. Imagine a trajectory of at least several
meters, like those of the magnificent fountains at Versailles. And if he can inhale water in such a manner, it stands to reason he can do the same with other substances. He can take in air, like a bellows, and learn to release it with direction and force. Can't you see it: the boy who blows out candles with his backside. The boy with the breathing bunghole!
    The doctor sighed rapturously. He did not, in fact, belong to the medical profession. He had assumed the title of doctor as a reflection of his expertise in all matters hypnotic, clairvoyant, and supernatural. He had studied and improved upon the writings of Dr. Mesmer; he had enjoyed considerable success on both the spiritualist and vaudevillian circuits. The doctor believed that no one was better suited than he to recognize a great talent and, moreover, he was acquainted with an impresario who would see the possibilities of the enterprise. How fortunate, he thought, that this dear woman and her extraordinary child should have come to me, rather than a medical practitioner. Joseph and his mother, of course, were unaware of their mistake, for the doctor, not being a man of rigid principles, neglected to alert them. He wore a William II moustache that Joseph admired, and would one day emulate, when he was a grown man.

Lesson
    CHARLOTTE , her face still gleaming wetly, unbuttons the bodice of her dress, draws her bow across the strings. She will accompany the nocturnal torments of M. Pujol, in the hope that he will cease his moaning. The sleeping man's anguish, released into the night, has now become her own: with each cry, M. Pujol conjures her former face and companion, Griselda.
    Listen, Madeleine.
    The viol sighs. The girl sits beside her.
    You should listen. Music, more than any other thing in the world, teaches us emotion.
    The viol grows agitated.
    Pathos! Fury!
    The viol sobs.
    Longing. Desire.
    Madeleine tells herself to listen hard, for she wants to expand her meager vocabulary. She has taken inventory and discovered the emptiness of her shelves: Curiosity; Amusement; Grumpiness; Delight; Disappointment. That is the extent of it.
    Spreading herself onto the caravan's floor, she presses her cheek against the floorboards, her paddles resting like two loyal dogs on either side of her face. She instructs her ear to pay strict attention. But as Charlotte sways beside her, the bow seesawing furiously, Madeleine finds that it is not her ear but her very body that is being exercised. The song rises up through her limbs,