“Turn the sleeve inside out,” said the seamstress.
Gaspard did not move. He had asked for a coat; this woman was asking him for a gesture. The difference was a trifle, yet it altered everything. Until that moment, he had thought he was entering a house where money would perform its customary office: a coin would be shown, an article carried away, and each party would keep their opinion of the other to themselves. Now, the seamstress was looking at his wrist as though she had recognized someone there.
He had come by way of the courtyard, after the shop had closed. A patron had directed him to Madeleine, or so he claimed. He required a less conspicuous garment, something capable of bearing dust without appearing to have traversed every highway in Provence. He would be gone before daybreak. Madeleine had set her oil lamp between them. She mended tears, shortened sleeves, turned linings; no one expected her to clothe hurried gentlemen whose names were unknown to all.
“That seam,” she repeated. “Show it to me.”
At last, he complied. On the inside of the wrist, three stitches of blue thread held a scrap of linen cloth. Madeleine ran her finger over them. She had no need to inspect the other sleeve. That spring, her sister had brought her this very coat: her husband always wore out the same elbow from driving his cart. The lining was gone; Madeleine had taken a remnant from her son’s shirt. One sometimes recognizes one’s handiwork with less pleasure than one’s children.
“Where did you buy this?”
“A man parted with it to me.”
“Which man?”
Gaspard withdrew his arm. The lamp illuminated the lower half of his face; he appeared younger still when he was not smiling. He had not given his name, but Madeleine had heard talk of an escaped prisoner from Draguignan. In the villages, news of an escape travels with an eagerness that resembles gratitude: another soul has forced a door, and for a moment everyone feels somewhat less imprisoned within their own life.
She, too, had laughed upon hearing of it. Her sister had ceased laughing ever since her husband had been stopped on a road and stripped of whatever he was bringing home. The coat had vanished along with the rest. The following day, he had borrowed a jacket to return to his labor; he preferred being taken for negligent rather than answering questions.
Madeleine pushed the lamp aside and drew a grey garment from a chest. The visitor held out his hand.
“How much?”
She folded it back up.
“Will you not try it on?”
“I shall manage well enough to slip into it.”
This time, her smile held no pleasure. He knew how to slip into a coat, how to slip out of a prison, how to slip in through a courtyard. Everything became a matter of passage with such men. Whatever they left behind fell to the charge of those who remained.
A door creaked upon the staircase. Madeleine turned her head before she could prevent herself. Her son sometimes came down to fetch water. She waited for the sound of his footsteps; none came. Gaspard had looked as well. From that instant forth, the upper floor existed between them, freighted with everything she had no wish to explain.
“You are afraid of me,” he said.
“I have work tomorrow.”
He appeared not to understand. She picked up a pair of shears, not to threaten him, but to finish a hem abandoned upon the table. She wished her hands would not tremble. The thread missed the eye of the needle twice; she laid it down. This bungled task brought her more shame than her fear.
Gaspard drew several coins from his pocket. Madeleine did not count them. The money seemed to retain the warmth of all the hands that might now be in want of it. Yet she had need of it. Her chest held more clothes to be returned than goods to be sold, and the grey garment belonged to a customer who would come to claim it in two days’ time.
“That one is not mine.”
“Then find another.”
“Do you imagine that everything here belongs to me?”
At last, he looked about the shop: the bundles tied in linen cloths, the names inscribed on slips of paper, the sleeves hanging from a peg. Madeleine felt the fleeting satisfaction of showing him a world where holding the keys did not mean owning the goods. She could open every chest; she would have had to account for every thread.
Outside, a voice called out to a neighbor. Gaspard rose. He made no movement toward her, but he had shifted his ground, and that ground lay between the table and the door to the stairs. Madeleine set both hands flat upon the wood.
“My son is sleeping,” she said.
The voice receded down the street. A laugh was heard, followed by the bang of a door. Gaspard remained standing for a few seconds more. When he returned to the lamplight, Madeleine understood what she must do: give him the means to depart. She would not barter with a man whose peace of mind hung upon every footstep heard behind the walls.
She went to fetch an old jacket. This one belonged to her; her husband had left it behind when he died. It was too broad across the shoulders for the visitor. He put it on nonetheless and worked his arms, as though the only judgment required was that of his own movements. Madeleine looked away. Never before had she found herself confronted by two absences worn by a single living man.
“Take the money,” he said.
“Leave the coat first.”
He laid it upon the table. She turned back the sleeve, found the three blue stitches, and ran her thumb across them. Gaspard nudged the coins toward her. His face had regained that ease he possessed upon entering—the countenance of a man who wishes to conclude a visit decently.
“You see plain enough that I am not robbing you.”
Madeleine looked at her husband’s jacket, then at the door to the stairs.
“You may tell that wherever you please.”
He departed through the courtyard. She waited before shooting the bolt; she still dreaded that the noise might draw him back. Only then did she count the money, wrap it in a rag, and place it apart from her till. Her son appeared upon the stairs, pitcher in hand. He asked who had come. She answered that a man had brought back a coat. It was the truth, and that truth cost her almost as dearly as a lie.
The next day, her sister recognized the sleeves. Madeleine gave her the garment and the rag without explaining the visit. Another jacket would have to be bought; the cold weather would return, and with it, the mending. She did not know whether the coins had paid for a piece of merchandise, bought her silence, or merely allowed the traveler to believe himself generous.
Gaspard Bouis, born at Besse in 1757, was recaptured in 1780 following his escape from Draguignan. The court of Aix condemned him; he was executed there in 1781. These dates belong to his history. In Madeleine’s, the news arrived by way of a customer who remarked that they had just put to death a man who was good to the poor. The seamstress listened without raising her eyes. She was finishing a sleeve with blue thread. This time, no one asked her to turn it inside out.