end of the lake to the other, and when you land, and see the pretty town on the side of the mountain, you remember: on a stiff card, tucked into the lining of your suitcase, there is written the address where you are expected.
Are you worried, Madeleine asks, that we will never find him?
I am worried, Adrien says, that I will leave the hospital, that I will travel for many days, and only upon wandering into a market and finding a stall selling figs, or meeting the eyes of a young prostitute, or stumbling over a mangy dog run out into the street, only then will I realize what I have forgotten to bring with me: M. Pujol.
Usury
WHAT MADELEINE THINKS IS: Oh yes. I know what you mean exactly. Like the words: Orchard, swallowâbut she cannot finish, because even to think her words again is to use them, to wear down the coins through repeated touching until they are of no value at all. So instead she says, stoutly: Do not worry. I will find him. And then we will all escape.
Coupling
MADELEINE, IN SECRET , wonders what will happen after the rescue takes place. There is the problem of numbers. The girl, the photographer, the flatulent man: three of them panting on the grass, with earth clumped in their eyebrows (escape by tunnel), or welts rising on their wrists (escape by rope). Or perhaps they are altogether untouched, having cooked a sticky and soporific pudding which the matron, unknowing, served the director with his lunch. Three people lie sprawled on the grass, chests hurting, the hospital far behind them.
Will the flatulent man rise up on his elbows, seeing Madeleine as if for the first time, noticing how well she looks, how bravely and wisely she carries herself, how her complexion has brightened and her figure filled out, how she has, in short, grown into a beautiful woman? (Why did I not see it before? he wonders. Right beneath my nose! he marvels.) Or will he roll onto his side, and find himself gazing at a dreamy young man, of a gentle and accommodating temperament, with whom he might retire to a fishing village on the edge of a warm sea and develop a lasting friendship? (There will be wine in the afternoons, he thinks; there will be a basket lowered and raised from our window.) Will he rise up on his elbows, or will he roll onto his side? It is impossible to predict.
If only a fourth should appear! The plucky kitchen boy, who aided the escape. The cynical magistrate, heart softened by the nobility of their cause. The long-lost fiancée, believed captured by pirates, who has disguised herself as a foreign prince and earned a
university degree. The resourceful milkmaid; the soldier; the poet, disaffected with his art. Anyone would do. Even the matron, the director, the Dromedary Boy. All are loveable, once one learns how.
Because a certain symmetry is required. If not everyone is accounted for, the plot seems less bold, the escape less like an escape. What had once seemed a story is revealed as nothing more than a series of miscalculations, muddles, trap doors, false alarms.
New Entry
BUT THERE IS NO NEED to continue searching for the flatulent man. He is delivered to them. Or to Adrien, at least, on a temporary basis: the subject for a study of Embarrassment.
M. Pujol's face, upon seeing the photographer, causes the director to reconsider. He is Stupefaction, the director cries, personified!
Adrien ducks behind his machinery. He, too, is taken by surprise. For here at the hospital, where hygiene is so furiously pursued, the matron has forbidden moustaches, especially those that require waxing, and M. Pujol's face, destitute of moustache, is hardly recognizable as his face at all. It would have been preferable if he had lost an eye. Also his body: it does not seem the same. Underneath the white smock that all the patients must wear, M. Pujol appears to be less perfectly slim, less gentlemanlike, and though Adrien has seen him a hundred times without clothes, the thought of it now horrifies him,
Are you worried, Madeleine asks, that we will never find him?
I am worried, Adrien says, that I will leave the hospital, that I will travel for many days, and only upon wandering into a market and finding a stall selling figs, or meeting the eyes of a young prostitute, or stumbling over a mangy dog run out into the street, only then will I realize what I have forgotten to bring with me: M. Pujol.
Usury
WHAT MADELEINE THINKS IS: Oh yes. I know what you mean exactly. Like the words: Orchard, swallowâbut she cannot finish, because even to think her words again is to use them, to wear down the coins through repeated touching until they are of no value at all. So instead she says, stoutly: Do not worry. I will find him. And then we will all escape.
Coupling
MADELEINE, IN SECRET , wonders what will happen after the rescue takes place. There is the problem of numbers. The girl, the photographer, the flatulent man: three of them panting on the grass, with earth clumped in their eyebrows (escape by tunnel), or welts rising on their wrists (escape by rope). Or perhaps they are altogether untouched, having cooked a sticky and soporific pudding which the matron, unknowing, served the director with his lunch. Three people lie sprawled on the grass, chests hurting, the hospital far behind them.
Will the flatulent man rise up on his elbows, seeing Madeleine as if for the first time, noticing how well she looks, how bravely and wisely she carries herself, how her complexion has brightened and her figure filled out, how she has, in short, grown into a beautiful woman? (Why did I not see it before? he wonders. Right beneath my nose! he marvels.) Or will he roll onto his side, and find himself gazing at a dreamy young man, of a gentle and accommodating temperament, with whom he might retire to a fishing village on the edge of a warm sea and develop a lasting friendship? (There will be wine in the afternoons, he thinks; there will be a basket lowered and raised from our window.) Will he rise up on his elbows, or will he roll onto his side? It is impossible to predict.
If only a fourth should appear! The plucky kitchen boy, who aided the escape. The cynical magistrate, heart softened by the nobility of their cause. The long-lost fiancée, believed captured by pirates, who has disguised herself as a foreign prince and earned a
university degree. The resourceful milkmaid; the soldier; the poet, disaffected with his art. Anyone would do. Even the matron, the director, the Dromedary Boy. All are loveable, once one learns how.
Because a certain symmetry is required. If not everyone is accounted for, the plot seems less bold, the escape less like an escape. What had once seemed a story is revealed as nothing more than a series of miscalculations, muddles, trap doors, false alarms.
New Entry
BUT THERE IS NO NEED to continue searching for the flatulent man. He is delivered to them. Or to Adrien, at least, on a temporary basis: the subject for a study of Embarrassment.
M. Pujol's face, upon seeing the photographer, causes the director to reconsider. He is Stupefaction, the director cries, personified!
Adrien ducks behind his machinery. He, too, is taken by surprise. For here at the hospital, where hygiene is so furiously pursued, the matron has forbidden moustaches, especially those that require waxing, and M. Pujol's face, destitute of moustache, is hardly recognizable as his face at all. It would have been preferable if he had lost an eye. Also his body: it does not seem the same. Underneath the white smock that all the patients must wear, M. Pujol appears to be less perfectly slim, less gentlemanlike, and though Adrien has seen him a hundred times without clothes, the thought of it now horrifies him,
Similar Books
![Vampires Among Us [Vampires Among Us 1] (Siren Publishing Classic)](https://fs.ageofbook.com/186821/thumbs/152x264/vampires-among-us-vampires-among-us-1-siren-publishing-classic.png)
