Free Madeleine Is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum Page B

over her cauldron, saying nothing. She thinks, Sometimes I grow clumsy with the handle of the broom. But is it my fault, that she takes up so much space?
    The preserves seethe about the neck of her spoon. Drops of sweat tremble on her brow. She frowns down, protectively, at the mess she has concocted: she must devise a defense. Her business, which she has nurtured so very tenderly, now finds itself under attack.
    The other women of the village, who until this point have been her stalwart companions, her confederates, her sisters-in-arms, have risen up against her. The reason? Covetousness, simply, which is certainly a sin. They begrudge her the success that has struck her house, swift and unbidden as the lightning bolt that set the mayor's roof on fire. The new fur muff in her lap, the lustrous flanks of her new horse, the rattle of the jam jars atop the postman's cart: it all feeds their fury. Sabotage is their only recourse, and soon rumors of unwholesomeness and sorcery are set roaming about the streets.
    Shattered crocks appear on her doorstep; the stone wall is speckled with jam. One day, on her way to market, she sees that a shrill placard has been erected along the road:
IF THE FLESH IS UNCLEAN THEN SO IS THE FOOD
BEWARE THE PRODUCTS OF AN UNHOLY HOME!
    She turns abruptly and stomps her way home. There, she surveys the girl spread before her, dewy and white and unruffled: You are the source of all this trouble, Mother says.

Deal
    M. PUJOL CAN SEE the girl and the photographer, quarrelling once more behind the shrubbery. A flurry of fingers rises up above the privet hedge. If he stood his travelling case on one end, and climbed on top, he could wave his arms; he could cry out, Adrien! and maybe the photographer would turn around and slowly smile. But instead he drives a bargain with himself: I will not call out his name, as long as—above him an arbiter rustles, presents itself—that leaf does not fall from that tree.
    He repeats the terms. They seem fair. And trusting in the impartial justice of the universe, he sits down on his travelling case.
    The voices continue, passing from reproach to lament to something he cannot quite recognize. Please. His face. Cannot. I saw you. The words sift over and stain him like pollen: Your hands. I cannot. But then a wind rises and the leaves stir and the voices are carried in the opposite direction, away from him. Remembering his leaf, he is sent into a panic: so many of them! All rustling, shifting, silvering; made unrecognizable in their commotion. But eventually the wind subsides and the leaves are stilled and once more it is revealed: his leaf, the one not as green as the others; looking, in fact, somewhat sickly. It trembles on its stem. It twists fretfully against the sky. When the wind lifts again, so do the flatulent mans hopes.
    But the leaf is more firmly attached to the tree than, by all appearances, it should be.
    M. Pujol searches for other signs: If that crow takes flight, he tells himself. That thistle bursts. That handsaw, in the distance, ceases.
    Then I will not have to go.

Harbinger
    THERE WAS ANOTHER young man once, his father an ambassador to a country M. Pujol had never heard of. He had come backstage bearing an armful of orchids, of cattleyas, and M. Pujol had shrunk in embarrassment: as though I were an opera dancer! But the young man presented them with his eyes lowered, saying nothing; and M. Pujol felt that to be insulted long would be impossible.
    Together they spoke little, and not often of love. Which is perhaps why, when remembering that year, M. Pujol will say of it only, My happiness then cannot be described. He means it literally, but how theatrical it sounds! To hear himself say it, even silently (for no one has asked), makes him prickle with shame. He takes refuge in these facts: the carriage we rode in was green; he had a scar, from an appendix operation, of which he was proud; he attended sixteen of my performances and his enthusiasm