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  It wasn’t long before word of the Miracle Bakery spread beyond Millepoix. Madam Grandevere mentioned it to a cousin who lived near Rheims, who gossiped with the ladies in her sewing circle who, naturally, passed the news on to their husbands. In Aix-en-Provence, the halls of the university echoed with tales that grew more fantastic as they spread from classroom to classroom. Eventually, a whisper from his valet to the Bishop of Avignon served to involve the Church, at which point, efforts to stop the tale from spreading would have been like asking the cheeses not to ripen or the vintners not to harvest their grapes.

  As time passed, all sorts of poor souls found their way to the bakery: a woman stricken with paralysis; spinsters who despaired of finding husbands; a young man who yearned to emulate Brando; young women who longed to dance at the Théâtre National; soldiers who had lost limbs; businessmen who had lost fortunes. By the time the morning sun crested the horizon, the desperate and unhappy were already assembled into a queue which stretched down the avenue.

  “This is getting out of control,” Louise proclaimed.

  But Henri remembered the pain of Marc’s death and it was unbearable to him that anyone else should similarly suffer, not when he had been blessed with the power to remove their sorrows and grant them a better life. He and Laurent toiled at the ovens from dawn until dusk. And when Laurent realized that Henri’s recipes contained ingredients other than butter, flour and eggs, he said not a word. That the young man was beautiful of both face and body did not necessarily mean that le Bon Dieu had balanced the scale by depriving him between the ears. Laurent had wisely claimed a profiterole or two for himself and had both a midnight blue Vespa and an extra inch of manhood to show for it. And when Henri had reached the limits of both what he could do without his wounds protruding past what his clothing covered, Laurent took up the knife without comment and assisted his employer in using parts of his body that were beyond Henri’s reach.

  “You must rest yourself.” Louise said while she helped Henri change the bandages on his chest, arms and legs. “You are going too far and will soon be used up.”

  “Nonsense,” Henri said.

  While it was true that the loss of blood had made him weak and the loss of his toes had made him wobbly, he had not sacrificed so much as a millimeter of skin from his hands, absent a few fingernail clippings with which he spiked the clafoutis. He could still use them to bake and, after all, was that not the most important thing?

  “I have a gift. It would be sinful not to use it.”

  So Louise clucked her tongue but held her peace until, one day, there came a knock at the cottage door from Laurent.

  “You must come at once,” he said.

  With uneasiness growing in her heart, she wrapped a shawl around her shoulders for, since she had left the opéra, she’d become sensitive to the slightest chill. As she hurried toward the bakery, she noticed the first traces of grey at Laurent’s temples and reflected that he was no longer a boy. Nevertheless, he still had the finest buttocks of any man she had known so she was content to allow him to lead the way.

  A deep sorrow enfolded her heart when she saw Henri on the floor, his lifeless hand clutching an empty tray from which a scattering of as-yet unfrosted mignardises had fallen and formed a rough halo of sweet pastry around his head and shoulders.

  “He was taking the petits fours from the oven,” Laurent explained with a shrug. “Et voila, he was gone.”

  The singer knelt upon the floor and pressed closed the staring eyes of the reluctant saint.

  “You must tell those outside that their wait has been in vain,” she said.

  Laurent’s eyes widened. “I cannot do that, Madam. I am a simple baker’s apprentice. They would tear me apart. Perhaps if the news came from someone who was once famous at l’opéra . . . ”

  He interrupted himself as the thought occurred to him, “Besides, Monsieur Henri would never have turned away so much business. You should tell them only that he is gone and that, after today, the miracles must cease.”

  “It is many hours until closing,” she pointed out. “What will we do . . . ?”

  “I have une petite idée and a sharp knife,” Laurent said. “To refuse the francs they offer, that would indeed be ungracious.”

  “You cannot possibly . . . !”

  “Attend to the crowd. I shall attend to the rest.”

  Louise squared her shoulders, adjusted her shawl so that it seemed more of a statement en vogue and less of a nécessité, and made sure that enough of her ample bosoms were displayed to impress, but not so much as to distract.

  “I am Louise Semillion,” she announced to the line of hopefuls, “You will remember me as La diva de L’opéra Palais de Grandier.”

  A respectful hush fell over everyone. Though some few of them were from the cities, most were from the countryside and were cowed by the presence of such an august personnage.

  “Our beloved baker has been unexpectedly called to God . . . ”

  A murmur of understanding rippled throughout the crowd. When it came to miracles, it was not unknown for le Bon Dieu to intervene lest mere mortals develop unreasonable demands upon His time. However, as Louise continued to assure them that the bakery would remain open for the day at least, they were content to pass, one by one, through the door to purchase their pastries and their dreams.

  “Voila!” Laurent told her, once the windows were shuttered and even the crumbs from the last baguette had been sold. “We have made of this day a success, even if only by the hair of our beards. Toward the end, I was worried that I would have to employ the grinder that we use for the venison pies.”

  “Poor Henri.” Louise gazed upon the sheet-covered remains of the baker, her eyes glistening. “He seems so small and sad.”

  Laurent paused his counting of the coins in the till. “There is, indeed, less of him then there was this morning. Fortunately, the Good Lord despises waste.”

  “I always knew country life would be the death of him. It is times like this when I most wish I was younger, still strong of voice, and could return to the opéra.”

  Laurent flashed her the same winning smile that, so many years before, had first intrigued the late baker.

  “I thought you might feel that way some day.” He pushed a single macaron across the counter toward her. “I saved this for you. After all you were his closest friend.”

  “I could never . . . !” Louise, said aghast.

  Laurent simply shrugged and, with his index finger, pushed the pastry a little closer.

  Distant echoes of applause seemed to echo in the shop. Louise inhaled sharply and, for an instant, her bosoms felt high and firm once again. When she exhaled, she resisted the urge to give voice to a note or two, perhaps even a scale, for fear the tones would be harsh or shrill.

  “Bon appetit,” Laurent said.

  Louise reached for the pastry. Hesitated. Glanced nervously at Henri’s body.

  She reached again.

  JACQUELINE ESS: HER WILL AND TESTAMENT

  Clive Barker

  My God, she thought, this can’t be living. Day in, day out: the boredom, the drudgery, the frustration.

  My Christ, she prayed, let me out, set me free, crucify me if you must, but put me out of my misery.

  In lieu of his euthanasian benediction, she took a blade from Ben’s razor, one dull day in late March, locked herself in the bathroom, and slit her wrists.

  Through the throbbing in her ears, she faintly heard Ben outside the bathroom door.

  “Are you in there, darling?”

  “Go away,” she thought she said.

  “I’m back early, sweetheart. The traffic was light.”

  “Please go away.”

  The effort of trying to speak slid her off the toilet seat and on to the white-tiled floor, where pools of her blood were already cooling.

  “Darling?”

  “Go.”

  “Darling.”

  “Away.”

  “Are you all right
?”

  Now he was rattling at the door, the rat. Didn’t he realize she couldn’t open it, wouldn’t open it?

  “Answer me, Jackie.”

  She groaned. She couldn’t stop herself. The pain wasn’t as terrible as she’d expected, but there was an ugly feeling, as though she’d been kicked in the head. Still, he couldn’t catch her in time, not now. Not even if he broke the door down.

  He broke the door down.

  She looked up at him through an air grown so thick with death you could have sliced it.

  “Too late,” she thought she said. But it wasn’t.

  ***

  My God, she thought, this can’t be suicide. I haven’t died.

  The doctor Ben had hired for her was too perfectly benign. Only the best, he’d promised, only the very best for my Jackie.

  “It’s nothing,” the doctor reassured her, “that we can’t put right with a little tinkering.”

  Why doesn’t he just come out with it? she thought. He doesn’t give a damn. He doesn’t know what it’s like.

  “I deal with a lot of these women’s problems,” he confided, fairly oozing a practiced compassion. “It’s got to epidemic proportions among a certain age bracket.”

  She was barely thirty. What was he telling her? That she was prematurely menopausal?

  “Depression, partial or total withdrawal, neuroses of every shape and size. You’re not alone, believe me.”

  Oh yes I am, she thought. I’m here in my head, on my own, and you can’t know what it’s like.

  “We’ll have you right in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.” I’m a lamb, am I? Does he think I’m a lamb?

  Musing, he glanced up at his framed qualifications, then at his manicured nails, then at the pens on his desk and notepad. But he didn’t look at Jacqueline. Anywhere but at Jacqueline.

  “I know,” he was saying now, “what you’ve been through, and it’s been traumatic. Women have certain needs. If they go unanswered—”

  What would he know about women’s needs? You’re not a woman, she thought she thought. “What?” he said.

  Had she spoken? She shook her head: denying speech. He went on; finding his rhythm once more: “I’m not going to put you through interminable therapy sessions. You don’t want that, do you? You want a little reassurance, and you want something to help you sleep at nights.” He was irritating her badly now. His condescension was so profound it had no bottom. All-knowing, all-seeing Father; that was his performance. As if he were blessed with some miraculous insight into the nature of a woman’s soul.

  “Of course, I’ve tried therapy courses with patients in the past.

  But between you and me—”

  He lightly patted her hand. Father’s palm on the back of her hand.

  She was supposed to be flattered, reassured, maybe even seduced. “—between you and me it’s so much talk. Endless talk. Frankly, what good does it do? We’ve all got problems. You can’t talk them away, can you?”

  You’re not a woman. You don’t look like a woman, you don’t feel like a woman—

  “Did you say something?” She shook her head.

  “I thought you said something. Please feel free to be honest with me.”

  She didn’t reply, and he seemed to tire of pretending intimacy. He stood up and went to the window.

  “I think the best thing for you—”

  He stood against the light: darkening the room, obscuring the view of the cherry trees on the lawn through the window. She stared at his wide shoulders, at his narrow hips. A fine figure of a man, as Ben would have called him. No child-bearer he. Made to remake the world, a body like that. If not the world, remaking minds would have to do.

  “I think the best thing for you—”

  What did he know, with his hips, with his shoulders? He was too much a man to understand anything of her.

  “I think the best thing for you would be a course of sedatives—” Now her eyes were on his waist.

  “—and a holiday.”

  Her mind had focused now on the body beneath the veneer of his clothes. The muscle, bone and blood beneath the elastic skin. She pictured it from all sides, sizing it up, judging its powers of resistance, then closing on it. She thought:

  Be a woman.

  Simply, as she thought that preposterous idea, it began to take shape. Not a fairy-tale transformation, unfortunately, his flesh resisted such magic. She willed his manly chest into making breasts of itself and it began to swell most fetchingly, until the skin burst and his sternum flew apart. His pelvis, teased to breaking point, fractured at its center; unbalanced, he toppled over onto his desk and from there stared up at her, his face yellow with shock. He licked his lips, over and over again, to find some wetness to talk with. His mouth was dry: his words were stillborn. It was from between his legs that all the noise was coming; the splashing of his blood; the thud of his bowel on the carpet.

  She screamed at the absurd monstrosity she had made, and withdrew to the far corner of the room, where she was sick in the pot of the rubber plant.

  My God, she thought, this can’t be murder. I didn’t so much as touch him.

  ***

  What Jacqueline had done that afternoon, she kept to herself. No sense in giving people sleepless nights, thinking about such peculiar talent.

  The police were very kind. They produced any number of explanations for the sudden departure of Dr. Blandish, though none quite described how his chest had erupted in that extraordinary fashion, making two handsome (if hairy) domes of his pectorals.

  It was assumed that some unknown psychotic, strong in his insanity, had broken in, done the deed with hands, hammers and saws, and exited, locking the innocent Jacqueline Ess in an appalled silence no interrogation could hope to penetrate.

  Person or persons unknown had clearly dispatched the doctor to where neither sedatives nor therapy could help him.

  ***

  She almost forgot for a while. But as the months passed it came back to her by degrees, like a memory of a secret adultery. It teased her with its forbidden delights. She forgot the nausea, and remembered the power. She forgot sordidity, and remembered strength. She forgot the guilt that had seized her afterward and longed, longed to do it again.

  Only better.

  ***

  “Jacqueline.”

  Is this my husband, she thought, actually calling me by my name?

  Usually it was Jackie, or Jack, or nothing at all. “Jacqueline.”

  He was looking at her with those big baby blues of his, like the college boy she’d loved at first sight. But his mouth was harder now, and his kisses tasted like stale bread.

  “Jacqueline.” “Yes.”

  “I’ve got something I want to speak to you about.”

  A conversation? she thought, it must be a public holiday. “I don’t know how to tell you this.”

  “Try me,” she suggested.

  She knew that she could think his tongue into speaking if it pleased her. Make him tell her what she wanted to hear. Words of love, maybe, if she could remember what they sounded like. But what was the use of that? Better the truth.

  “Darling, I’ve gone off the rails a bit.”

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  Have you, you bastard, she thought.

  “It was while you weren’t quite yourself. You know, when things had more or less stopped between us. Separate rooms . . . you wanted separate rooms . . . and I just went bananas with frustration. I didn’t want to upset you, so I didn’t say anything. But it’s no use me trying to live two lives.”

  “You can have an affair if you want to, Ben.”

  “It’s not an affair, Jackie. I love her—”

  He was preparing one of his speeches, she could see it gathering momentum behind his teeth. The justifications that became accusations, those excuses that always turned into assaults on her character. Once he got into full flow there’d be no stopping him. She didn’t want to hear.

  “—she�
�s not like you at all, Jackie. She’s frivolous in her way. I suppose you’d call her shallow.”

  It might be worth interrupting here, she thought, before he ties himself in his usual knots.

  “She’s not moody like you. You know, she’s just a normal woman. I don’t mean to say you’re not normal: you can’t help having depressions. But she’s not so sensitive.”

  “There’s no need, Ben—”

  “No, damn it, I want it all off my chest.”

  On to me, she thought.

  “You’ve never let me explain,” he was saying. “You’ve always given me one of those damn looks of yours, as if you wished I’d—”

  Die.

  “—wished I’d shut up.” Shut up.

  “You don’t care how I feel!” He was shouting now. “Always in your own little world.”

  Shut up, she thought.

  His mouth was open. She seemed to wish it closed, and with the thought his jaws snapped together, severing the very tip of his pink tongue. It fell from between his lips and lodged in a fold of his shirt.

  Shut up, she thought again.

  The two perfect regiments of his teeth ground down into each other; cracking and splitting, nerve, calcium and spit making a pinkish foam on his chin as his mouth collapsed inward.

  Shut up, she was still thinking as his startled baby blues sank back into his skull and his nose wormed its way into his brain.

  He was not Ben any longer, he was a man with a red lizard’s head, flattening, battening down upon itself, and, thank God, he was past speech-making once and for all.

  Now she had the knack of it, she began to take pleasure in the changes she was willing upon him.

  She flipped him head over heels on to the floor and began to compress his arms and legs, telescoping flesh and resistant bone into a smaller and yet smaller space. His clothes were folded inward, and the tissue of his stomach was plucked from his neatly packaged entrails and stretched around his body to wrap him up. His fingers were poking from his shoulder blades now, and his feet, still thrashing with fury, were tipped up in his gut. She turned him over one final time to pressure his spine into a foot-long column of muck, and that was about the end of it.