Narrative Voice: Madame Lenormand Speaks

This is an early draft, likely to tighten and change as I work on it, but this is the voice that is emerging for Madame Lenormand who I'm considering as The Appassionata's "intrusive narrator." I'm pretty excited about the direction it's taking here. Once I discovered that even Chopin had been to Madame Lenormand for a reading, it seemed to me this might really be the way to move into the text as the narrator.

The Sibyl of Faubourg Saint-Germain
A Prelude

By my sibyl’s blood, I am one who perceives the fulcrum that connects past and present to future times. Like gathering storm clouds, my visions form even as the ink that here falls from the end of my pen reaches this my smudged page. You bear witness, my friends, not only to the tale I have to tell, but to the possibility that one such as myself, through a gift no one comprehends, can tether the past to the future and move the dead to speak. Were it not required, I should never presume to intrude my presence upon your solitude, for no storytelling, however intimate, can recall the fullness of even one moment. And here, I must remind you, dear friends, that you live only in our future and that though we reach to you, we cannot embrace you or impose upon you the direction you must take. It is your will to do what you will… as you will… when you will. We can only tell our tale.

I have seen the inside of more than one prison for the brazen certainty of my words, words I am compelled forthwith to deliver now to you. Truth be known, I am, as they say, but a messenger. I take my words from elsewhere and always have. One I presume to be an angel, who calls himself Ariel, speaks to me and thus I, his conduit, speak to you. He comes in dreams, and once when I was very young I sat with him before what I thought to be the Throne of God, though it looked very like the dining table in my uncle’s home. We sat reading from the Book of Life, a huge tome I struggled to hold in my arms. I could make nothing of the letters and words; they swam before my eyes like snakes in a riverbed. Indeed, I could barely see my companions, for there were two—the one I call Ariel and a nameless one who was his teacher. That one shone with such brilliance I could look upon him no more than one can look upon the sun. I squinted and took up the two slender knitting hooks that had been given me, for I understood I was to employ them. The tome was a manual, holding instructions for this great task, but since it swam as it did, I could decipher nothing of its wisdom.

The one called Ariel reached to assist me, explaining that even had I been able to apprehend what lay before me on the page, it was inadequate to the task confronting us. Something unprecedented was required; human history made it so. This angel—who had the stature of a giant—without abandoning his station enveloped me in gentle arms and guided my hands to make of pure light a stitch, such as I might make from my aunt’s woolly yarn. And thus emerged the fabric of the universe, which we all weave in varying degrees of self-awareness.

Were it possible to convey the power of this strange vision without words, for it happened in a world where words become flesh, I would say no more. I would, with a slight of hand, accomplish what Monsieur Hugo longed for as he undertook the tale of his hunchback: I would transport you without ink, my friends of future days, into a past so substantial in nature that you would leave your cynicism behind and walk the streets of Paris with me as you might walk among the tombs of Père Lechaise. Indeed, you would recognize why you are among the living, not the dead, and we would tell you what we have learned about this dear orb of ours and how to live that it might survive to complete its heavenly course.

Alas, this cannot be done. We have but human words in spite of our safe harbor among the dead. And our words, unlike those of the brilliant ones, do not dance upon the page, nor pulse with that uncontrollable force we call existence. They are strung one after the other in a tedium of unfolding logic and must—in order to be understood—be read one word after the other no matter the language. Such rigidity does not befit the truth of human experience which erupts in concurrence and concert, as when instruments play together in symphony. Yet, there is nothing to be done for it; you must follow our words individually, each in their turn.

And because I must begin somewhere, I will tell you first that it is true what they say about me: as a child I learned from the gypsies to read the grounds of coffee, the ash of fires, and the shards of the broken mirror. I studied the lines that crisscross our palms and the trajectories of heavenly bodies. During my tender youth, when I first walked the streets of my beloved Paris—a clerk in my uncle’s shop where ladies (and gentlemen) came to find that famous black lingerie he sold—I found my way to the alchemists and the mythic tales the Greeks and Romans know. I studied the geomancy of the earth, combed the sacred texts of the Kabbalah, and discovered that numbers hold magic. Whether it’s true I died a virgin, on this I shed no light, and leave for you to decide.

I will tell you I have indeed been queried by thousands, including many whose names now burn the pages of history. I have had them all at my feet. Men of power. Yes, Robespierre frequented my parlor. I reported to him his downfall and that of Danton, and I warned General Hoche of the poison, and Monsieur Moreau of an untimely grave, and though she did not welcome it, I told Josephine of her Emperor’s treachery and ultimate defeat. And yes, I saw kings too, even during the sorry Restoration of which I now write, though the practice of my art was called “black” and strictly forbidden. During those last years, I was obliged to veil my vocation and practice it within a besieged citadel. Indeed, I paid a good many a good deal to keep my sanctum sanctorum operative.

They came to me even then, as you will see, from the common serving girl to the sly mistress to the delicate gloved Chopin; they came seeking insight and advice, as so now, do you. And so, let us begin.