* Authors : Anatoly Belilovsky and K. A. Teryna

* Narrator : Tina Connolly

* Host : Graeme Dunlop

* Audio Producer : Peter Wood

*

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PodCastle 428: Madame Félidé Elopes is a PodCastle original.

Rated PG

This story was written for a contest, and was based on an original painting by Yekaterina Yeliseeva.

This is this story’s first English publication. Click here to find the original story in Russian.

Madame Félidé Elopes

by K. A. Teryna translated by Anatoly Belilovsky

1.  Madame Félidé and the Smile Merchants

On Friday Madame Félidé bought all the smiles the local merchants had for sale. Merry and sad, shy and modest, childlike and old, tender, happy, polite, ugly, warm, soft, villainous, ironic, open, timid, grudging, obsequious—every single one. Shopkeepers dug through their deepest cellars to find silly grins that rarely sold and usually gathered dust amid bits of obsolete gossip and jokes peeled off the floor after they had fallen flat. She emptied the display cases of fleeting smiles and gullible smiles and especially made sure to acquire every single sincere smile in the entire town. She also bought two ounces of contagious laughter and half a pound of good cheer. For change, the sales clerk gave her a tulle sachet full of pointed double entendres.

Dancing, skipping, and humming a silly little song about a cat, Madame Félidé hurried home. What a stir she would cause in the town when everyone realized they’d have to spend holidays with serious faces! Some may have smiles squirrelled away for a rainy day, some may have to rifle through keepsake boxes for antique smiles inherited from their grandmothers. How funny they will look wearing grins a century out of date, and mothball-scented at that! But the rest will skulk along the boulevard, avoiding their friends. What if someone makes a clever joke? Does one respond with cheap tasteless laughter scraped up with pocket lint? Or with a silent nod, betraying shortsighted stinginess?

On the way home Madame Félidé encountered prim Anglian women who walked their well-schooled children and well-bred dogs—or was it the other way around? All of them—women, children, and dogs—cast great quantities of disapproving looks her way, opprobrium being an inexpensive commodity often shared generously with strangers. In return, Madame Félidé took a brand new mysterious smile from her reticule and tried it on right there in the middle of the street. She walked on, warmed by the sounds of Anglians’ horrified whispers as they gossiped about her odd spendthrift profligacy.

Avion waited in her garden, squeaking his wheels nervously; his high-strung personality kept him awake instead of sleeping quietly in the hangar. A family of siskins perched on Avion’s prow-like nose chittering happily to each other as she approached.

2.  Madame Félidé visits the sea shore

Madame Félidé did not like painting. That is why she painted dozens of landscapes and portraits which now gathered dust in her attic. She did not hang her work in rooms she actually used, believing (correctly, as it turned out) that the bright colors of her paintings would ruin the delicately tasteful Anglian style of the interior which was a source of justifiable pride for her House. Madame Félidé was a softhearted woman who often showed m...